[HN Gopher] The biggest source of waste is untapped skilled prag...
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The biggest source of waste is untapped skilled pragmatists
Author : jpn
Score : 208 points
Date : 2024-04-17 15:04 UTC (7 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (cutlefish.substack.com)
| seporterfield wrote:
| Real
| jasonlotito wrote:
| This is from part 2, but wow...
|
| > Do not use mushy words like ... ownership,
|
| If you think ownership is just mushy words, you've never given
| someone ownership. Giving someone ownership isn't just mush. It's
| real, and can have real impact. Of course, this also literally
| means giving them some actual, real, legal ownership in that
| project and it's results.
|
| This is especially hypocritical when paired with an "actual
| example"
|
| > The intended outcome is to increase the rate at which we create
| value for customers, facilitate easier troubleshooting, decrease
| downtime, enable more developers to work across different code
| bases seamlessly and improve developer morale.
|
| Talk about mush. That's just one part of a completely mushy
| "behavioral statement" that just reeks of insincerity and mush.
| This is also covered under specifics, and the entire thing lacks
| _ANY_ specifics.
|
| Give them ownership. Real ownership, not this fake "ownership"
| that clearly comes from someone who doesn't know what the word
| means. Give them power to drive direction and results, and reward
| them for that.
|
| There are more things that could be said about this, but
| honestly, reading that, it just screamed hypocrisy.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I disagree with you. I spent most of my career in a great
| company that is privately owned (famous billionaire.) The
| company pays extremely well but does not provide any sort of
| "legal ownership" as you describe.
|
| Still, I felt massive ownership of stuff I've .. well ..
| "owned" and I benefited financially and emotionally from it. I
| am no longer at the company but I have pride in what I've built
| there and the fact that it still exists and generates
| tremendous value.
|
| On the financial side of things, people (leadership) think of
| certain people as owning/driving certain things, because we do.
| So even though I am not the legal owner of platform X, you go
| get to have some good reviews for having created and nurtured
| that thing which is now creating goodness.
|
| After I left the company, my wife and I were in the south of
| Argentina on an ice trek. Started talking to a fellow trekker,
| who turns out what in finance. I told him that I used to be in
| finance and had built systems X and Y - and he was like "you're
| the guy?! I use those things every day, they are game changing
| in our industry." That felt very good.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I would love to have a chunk of equity in
| that company but it doesn't matter - I am still very happy in
| how "ownership mentality" worked out in terms of $ and pride.
|
| To be clear it takes two to tango. I'd never operate like this
| in a place that didn't reward me for operating this way.
| Jerrrry wrote:
| >>I told him that I used to be in [z] and had built systems X
| and Y - and he was like "you're the guy?! I use those things
| every day, they are game changing in our industry." That felt
| very good.
|
| It is taken a bit for granted, developers' massive ability to
| impact the workflow, and thus morale, for a significant
| amount of people; for better or for worse.
|
| Knowing my 15 minute coffee HTML exercise can save 500+
| people 10+ minutes daily, with a near instant feedback loop,
| was about as resolved as I could had been.
|
| It plays into the need to be needed, the inverse of the fear
| of being replaced, the most basic innate thought in our
| psyche's.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| That line you cherry-picked is in the context of what someone
| else wants:
|
| > Here is an example I worked out with a real person, imagining
| what they hoped the Marias on their team would do more often.
| In their mind, this is what "going above and beyond" looks
| like.
|
| I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the author also thinks
| the statement in your second pull quote is mushy. It sounds
| about as mushy as the "fake ownership" stuff.
| SlavikCA wrote:
| Ownership becomes mushy word, when you get to own duty and lack
| the power to make decisions.
|
| Manager: you need to take ownership, meaning that you figure
| out requirements (and get the blame when requirements changes),
| you make the product and project decision (and get the blame,
| when for outcomes), you find all the people needed to figure
| out deploy details and no, you can't make decision about what
| we're using in production.
|
| Employee: I'm better figure out how to cover my butt...
| hedora wrote:
| The stuff you quoted as "mush" can be continuously quantified
| as part of normal ongoing business.
|
| Legal ownership can't be quantified in that way. You'd need to
| go to court and have a judge decide who really owns the product
| and liability, and then evaluate that person / entity's job
| performance.
|
| To use an aviation analogy, you're proposing replacing randomly
| spot checking of assemblies for properly tightened bolts, etc.,
| with the legal shell game that Boeing currently uses.
|
| The spot checks would have been less expensive upfront, and
| also alerted them to their current issues 5-10 years earlier.
| At that point it would have been trivial to fix.
| jf22 wrote:
| How are you using the word hypocrisy here?
| bilsbie wrote:
| I'd add that this breakdown needs to include the naive. I found
| most overworkers never thought about questioning the purpose to
| tasks or working long hours.
| luisgvv wrote:
| I began as a junior dev and climbed up the ranks til the point
| where I became the SME in some areas of the product.
|
| Got laid off because sales goals were not met while they retained
| people which I think were incompetent in their work. Even some
| guys which I think were better and more critical to the projects
| were dumped.
|
| I'm not climbing that ladder by being proactive and "pragmatic"
| again...
|
| Call me a paycheck stealer, quiet quitter etc.
|
| Just give me some JIRA ticket and let me read books while I get
| my job done in 1-2 hours a day.
| sneak wrote:
| To assume all organizations reward or value expertise the same
| way is to cap your maximum lifetime earnings, methinks.
| sevagh wrote:
| I'm in this trap right now a little bit. After a particularly
| egregious instance of feeling passed over for a promo, how
| can I trust that the next jerkoff won't do the same thing?
| autoexecbat wrote:
| It's a pretty strong signal that your opinion of the value
| you're providing is not shared by those who are making the
| decisions. Regardless of if it's their own ignorance or not
| they aren't going to suddenly change their feelings about
| it.
| sevagh wrote:
| Oh yeah, agreed; I quit the moment it happened. What I
| mean is now I'm sort of wary of the same situation re-
| occurring at the next place I work.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| People aren't all the same. It's easy to forget this.
|
| And it totally makes sense to be wary! That will help you
| pick a better place next time.
|
| Although, to be fair, the average place probably closer
| to what you describe, meaning there is a limited supply
| of high quality places at the top end of the
| distribution.
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _That will help you pick a better place next time._
|
| I'm convinced there is no means available to an employee
| to "picking a better place". Last time I job hopped, I
| tried to do that -- and largely, I think I succeeded. But
| company leadership changed, my good boss left and was
| replaced by a _terrible_ new boss (who has since also
| left, and been replaced by a less terrible boss) ... so
| what I evaluated when I joined is no more.
|
| And that assumes I can even truly do a good job of
| evaluating a time of joining ... I tend to believe I got
| more lucky than anything else there.
| blitzar wrote:
| > how can I trust that the next jerkoff won't do the same
| thing
|
| You 100% can trust that they will do the exact same thing,
| accept that you are always rolling the dice and progress at
| the irrational whim of some higher power in the
| organisation.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| You make think that you're hiding this attitude in your
| professional life, but you're not. The reason it keeps
| happening to you is you've created a self-fulling
| prophecy.
|
| I'm a manager and it's odd that you think 1. we don't
| care for and push really hard to progress the people we
| manage, and 2. somehow we're so different that we're not
| in the same situation.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| it's tough, but you should put some explicit thought in to
| what you expect, and what it's worth to you. You'll
| probably have to "give some of it away for free" to prove
| you've got something of value; the hard part is deciding
| when you've given enough and can leave or deliver an
| ultimatum. Define something you really want to do that
| demonstrates your value. Tell your boss explicitly what you
| want and how you're going to earn it. Do the thing. Ideally
| you'll get the reward but if not ask. Follow through on
| your convictions.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Control your destiny. Form an LLC and go prospect some
| customers on your terms.
| dakiol wrote:
| > Just give me some JIRA ticket and let me read books while I
| get my job done in 1-2 hours a day.
|
| Aren't we all (normal and decent people) doing this already?
| switchbak wrote:
| No. Many of us are working hard, trying to get real work
| done. And spending 20-40 mins a day checking Hacker News :)
|
| Seriously though, don't you feel bad by not pulling your
| weight? Someone has to get your work done.
| autoexecbat wrote:
| > Someone has to get your work done.
|
| That's often the problem, in that it doesn't truly matter
| if the work got done
| icedchai wrote:
| There's a ton of "fake work" in corporate america. This
| is basically busy work that isn't used by any real
| customer, external or internal. That work doesn't need to
| be done, but shows up because someone committed to it for
| political reasons (or because they were clueless.)
| Someone needs a box checked, but didn't check if the box
| needed to be there in the first place.
| autoexecbat wrote:
| It doesn't even need to be fake/busy work. It might just
| not be quite what's needed by the business or customer
| and see little/no use.
| icedchai wrote:
| True, though often that sort of work "feels" different
| from the more traditional fake work. It's at least built
| with the intent / belief that a customer will actually
| use it.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Its not your work unless you own the company
| Seb-C wrote:
| "your work" means "your responsibility" or "your part of
| the deal" here, not "you get legal ownership of the
| project".
|
| The premise of a working contract being that you have to
| work in exchange for a salary...
| WalterBright wrote:
| Your work is what you agreed to in exchange for your
| salary.
| linhns wrote:
| Then there will be no company
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| this mindset only makes sense when the mission of the
| company is noble and appreciated by the greater community.
| otherwise you are a fool for having this attitude
| ammasant wrote:
| You falsely assume the only 'work' to be done is that
| immediately aligned with sprint velocity rather than all
| that done to make someone a valuable contributor in the
| first place (what your employer is actually paying for).
| The person who spends ~2 hours a day 'working' and the rest
| of their day on research, self-education, or more
| theoretical domains will become exponentially more valuable
| over time compared the most endurant hamster wheel runner
| as a function of qualitatively superior capabilities. Smart
| engineers realize this growth curve and alter their
| trajectory, benefitting both themselves and their employer
| long-term.
| marssaxman wrote:
| > Someone has to get your work done.
|
| What makes it "my work"? That is for management to decide,
| is it not?
| K0balt wrote:
| You get the work done that the position requires. If you
| can do that in a couple of hours, I see no incentive
| whatsoever for most employees to increase productivity
| beyond the requirement for the position plus maybe some
| minor stuff that won't be enough to encourage additional
| responsibilities.
|
| If they want more than that, employers should pay
| significantly more than their competitors for those
| services, or significant stock bonuses tied to departmental
| efficiency, or some other add-on compensation that
| incentivises increased productivity.
| petepete wrote:
| 20-40 mins an hour here chief.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| You're applying emotion to the cold calculus of economics.
| I'm supplying an acceptable amount of labor to my boss
| (evident by the fact that my boss hasn't fired/complained
| to me) in exchange for an acceptable amount of money
| (evident by the fact that I haven't quit).
|
| We're all on salary. Unless whatever I'm working on is
| going to boost my options enough to make it worth my while
| (it won't), there's no reason to break my back.
| Seb-C wrote:
| As someone who cares about his work, has strong professional
| ethics and wisely chooses his employers to not end-up in such
| environments, no I don't.
|
| The worst places for me are precisely those where you can get
| by with 1~2h of work a day because no one cares and the
| company's culture does not value the time and skills of his
| workers.
| rybosworld wrote:
| > wisely chooses his employers to not end-up in such
| environments
|
| This is a pretty common attitude. That is, "I'm able to
| pick better workplaces than you are".
|
| It implies you have control over the other people that work
| at the company. And unless you're the CEO, you don't. You
| cannot with any certainty tell what a work environment is
| like in the interview stage.
|
| You can job hop a half dozen times until you find a good
| fit. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that.
| But framing it as: "I pick better work environments than
| you" is an attitude I'd really like to see disappear. It
| ignores just how much of a role luck plays.
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| You seem to be projecting a lot of insecurities. Some
| people prefer not to work in such an environment, and
| that is okay. Those people just switch jobs until they're
| satisfied, there is no "controlling other people" or
| whatever nonsense you dreamed up.
| rybosworld wrote:
| > You seem to be projecting a lot of insecurities.
|
| Interesting counter argument.
|
| > Those people just switch jobs until they're satisfied,
| there is no "controlling other people"
|
| This is exactly what I said in my comment, if you take
| the time to read it.
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| Yes, how did you go from
|
| > wisely chooses his employers to not end-up in such
| environments
|
| to
|
| > implies you have control over the other people that
| work at the company
|
| instead of just assuming they'll just leave?
| rybosworld wrote:
| Let me ask this:
|
| Do you agree that a work environment/culture is defined
| by the people who are a part of it?
|
| Do you think that during the interview stage, an employer
| can characterize the work environment as different than
| it is in reality?
|
| If you say yes to both of these, then I don't understand
| the disconnect.
|
| Maybe I can summarize another way:
|
| - It's not possible to really know what a work
| environment is like until you actually start working
| there. To deny this is to deny that other people at the
| company play a role in the work environment. Since you
| don't have control over other people, you don't have
| control over the work environment.
|
| - Therefore, characterizing a decision to accept
| employment at a particular employer, as evidence of one's
| own superior ability to predict what the work environment
| is like is... misguided?
|
| Job hopping until you find a work environment that fits
| is a good idea. But this is trial and error. It's not the
| result of a superior ability to sniff out work cultures
| before accepting employment.
|
| My last question is: how did this line of reasoning
| offend you so deeply to suggest that I'm projecting
| insecurity?
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| Do you think you can't choose a different place of
| employment after saying "yes" to one? Do you think you're
| stuck there forever? Do you not realize you can choose a
| different employer, even after you already started
| working there?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > This is a pretty common attitude. That is, "I'm able to
| pick better workplaces than you are".
|
| Not necessarily. It's "I'm less willing to _stay at a bad
| workplace_ than you are ".
|
| Maybe it was bad when I picked it. Maybe it became bad
| after I was there for a decade. Maybe it became bad
| quickly; maybe slowly. Whatever. When I realize that it's
| become a bad place to work, I'm not "quiet quitting", I'm
| putting my resume on the street. I'm not desperately
| taking the first offer - I'm trying to find something
| _better_ , not just something different - but as soon as
| I have a good offer, I'm gone.
| rybosworld wrote:
| I understand what you're saying but respectfully, that is
| not what the person I am replying to said:
|
| > wisely chooses his employers to not end-up in such
| environments
| KittenInABox wrote:
| This is harder and harder the more senior you get. It
| looks suspicious if you're hopping after 1.5-2 yrs.
| ghaff wrote:
| One hop is probably fine. There wasn't a meeting of the
| minds. If it becomes a pattern, it will probably repeat.
| gopher_space wrote:
| > This is a pretty common attitude. That is, "I'm able to
| pick better workplaces than you are".
|
| It's more about not applying to certain jobs, or
| cancelling the process after the first red flag.
|
| > You cannot with any certainty tell what a work
| environment is like in the interview stage.
|
| Sure I can. But I might have been at it for a decade or
| two longer than you have. Folks on HN talk about the
| warning signs and red flags in interviews all the time,
| and from my perspective they're mostly right.
|
| edit: removed unfinished sentence
| rybosworld wrote:
| Guessing with a higher accuracy is still guessing.
| gopher_space wrote:
| If I'm rolling the dice then we've moved from d00 to d20
| and saved a ton of time. Here are a few general examples
| of things I'll look at:
|
| - Can I tell what the actual _point_ of the job is from
| the job description? Does it describe what their services
| are in service to?
|
| - How many non-technical, non-domain experts will I speak
| with before I'm talking engineer to engineer?
|
| - How jazzed are the interviewers about speaking with me,
| in the moment? Are they interested in the details of
| earlier projects? Are they _curious_ about me, or just
| running down a list of questions?
|
| - Do they use leetcode or similar? There are a lot of
| really good reasons for a company to use leetcode in
| their hiring process, but none of those reasons are
| particularly good for _me_ , as an employee.
|
| - Do their interview questions make sense, given their
| context? E.g are they quizzing me on recursion from an
| environment where recursion wouldn't be a particularly
| great idea?
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| It seems like the truth though.
|
| I have a friend who can only bear to work at places that
| provide meaningful work and aren't toxic environments. He
| finds "bullshit jobs" psychological corrosive and he will
| quicky become depressed if he finds himself at one. He
| will go six months to a year between jobs, and will leave
| a job quickly if it turns out it doesn't meet his
| criteria.
|
| On the flip side when he finds something he likes he
| works 60+ weeks and never less than everything he can to
| the job. He burns bright and generally leaves after two
| years, repeating the process.
|
| Most people aren't like this. They will work just enough
| at a job that is just good enough. It's not about being
| better, it's about taking a different approach to finding
| and retaining a job.
| creesch wrote:
| Ignoring the amount of time spend working for a moment. I
| would be miserable if all I got to do during that time was
| work on Jira tickets others created.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| No, definitely not.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Aren't we all (normal and decent people) doing this
| already?
|
| I've known many such in my career. They weren't fooling
| anybody. Everybody knew who they were. When they'd get laid
| off or were passed over for a raise they were always baffled
| and outraged.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Uh huh. The more common case is they get promotion and
| raises like everyone else while sometimes producing -ve
| value. Even if there's a comeuppance one day, this can go
| on for years before there are any consequences.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think this highly depends on the manager. Some know
| (Manager A), and either work to correct it, or get their
| ducks in a row to fire them. Plenty of managers, though,
| (Manager B) have no idea what a reasonable amount of work
| output is, and can be easily convinced that what took 1-2
| hours to do constituted an entire 40 hour week. You get
| some developer who's good at "managing upward" and they'll
| bullshit/charm and walk all over that manager. Often these
| managers are themselves "managing upward" to their
| directors, and so on up the chain, resulting in an entire
| reporting line successfully doing nothing.
|
| It doesn't matter that the slacker's peers know exactly
| what is going on. They're too busy doing their own work,
| and if they complain about it to Manager B, they won't be
| believed.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've been a manager and an employee and I've talked to
| many managers. They know who the slackers are, but there
| can be reasons why they take no action. When an
| opportunity arises to get rid of them, they do.
| icedchai wrote:
| Yes. I've been specifically told that they are unable or
| unwilling to do anything about the slackers, but
| "understand the situation."
| twojobsoneboss wrote:
| To be clear, there's a big difference between taking 4x
| as long to do something useful, vs actually doing
| nothing, or something of negative value ;-)
|
| If you're fast and working remote, you can still achieve
| seemingly normal output while reclaiming much of your
| time
| icedchai wrote:
| Yep. I've seen it happen. If you have too many clueless
| people at the top, the tail will wag the dog, so to
| speak. The slacker's peers often don't care as long as
| the slacking doesn't cause more work them. It's a "don't
| ask, don't tell" situation all around.
| heurist wrote:
| I've never felt secure enough to check out like this, even
| when my position was effectively locked in. I always want to
| improve and attain something bigger, so I look for problems
| beyond my scope when the work isn't coming to me. I feel
| comfort thinking I know how to take an idea through the full
| execution cycle due to my practice in seeking and solving
| problems. But it is hard for me to relax and let go.
| twojobsoneboss wrote:
| If you're in a team lead or staff (most places) kind of
| position you can't...
| hinkley wrote:
| I'll be you ten bucks they got rid of people who bring up bad
| news and kept the yes-men. A company that doesn't know what's
| broken is doomed to mediocrity.
|
| But some people want to play music while the ship sinks. So
| they arrange for the most pleasant rest of the voyage they can,
| instead of saving as many people as they can.
| vkou wrote:
| Unless they are given meaningful equity, it's not their ship,
| and regardless of whether it is or isn't, unlike the
| shareholders and creditors, they won't be sinking with it.
|
| If you want worker interests to be even a little aligned with
| owner interests, the correct corporate structure is not an S
| corp, or a C corp, it is some flavor of worker co-op.
|
| And even then, it can't grow too big.
| erikerikson wrote:
| A co-op only attenuates to employees. There are better
| options. Example: FairShares Commons
| hinkley wrote:
| Don't you have the same problem illustrated by this
| author? My perspective is the "untapped" people get
| diminished rewards for their inputs because they are
| being outplayed by politicos who inflate their importance
| to the process at the expense of others. For some people
| it is less work to make the system unfair than to excel
| on a fair system.
| erikerikson wrote:
| I agree that this structure has incentive problems and
| have so far avoided it. That said, I think it does better
| than a co-op. This fits the saying "the opposite of
| stupid is not smart". Standard corporations [frequently]
| used to serve only owners have a problematic incentive
| structure for everyone else. A co-op that serves only
| employees has a different bad incentive structure. Of
| course there are instances of improvements over the base
| incentive. The FairShares Commons attempts to be explicit
| about the balance between the stakeholders of the
| corporation. You can read more on Boyd's site [0] but
| really chapters 15 and 16 of his book Rebuild that seems
| to be linked there.
|
| [0] https://graham-boyd.biz/fairshare-commons/
| 7789123 wrote:
| >A co-op only attenuates to employees. There are better
| options. Example: FairShares Commons
|
| I am very interested in learning about these types of
| models.
|
| I don't know what search terms would get me there, and/or
| any lists of these types of models that have been
| curated.
|
| Could you suggest anything that would expedite
| researching this?
| hinkley wrote:
| People get invested in their work. And there are a lot of
| software people who make their work part of their identity,
| and so when they are accused of doing bad work they take is
| as a personal attack.
| Retric wrote:
| Getting invested doesn't mean your interests align.
| What's best for your or the product can be different than
| what's good for your boss, your company, your customers,
| or your teammates.
|
| I used to document things in a way that would quickly get
| people up to speed, but was generally useless to current
| team members. Very useful if you where new or hadn't
| touched the project in 3+ years, but no so helpful if
| you've been working on it for the last few months.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > I'll be you ten bucks they got rid of people who bring up
| bad news and kept the yes-men
|
| I'm pretty cynical and assumed this was how layoffs worked
| but at least in faang and even smaller (maybe 500 people) SV
| companies, I actually don't think this is the case anymore.
| Most I've seen have been extremely random - it seems like
| they cut teams/orgs very differently but on an individual
| level it seems random. I got the impression it's some lawsuit
| thing, because they never leak the info beforehand so
| managers and other seniors can chime in, so it appears
| they're cutting blindly from the exec level. There's probably
| some politics going on in the higher echelons and maybe they
| force individuals out but with managers (including decorated
| ones) and regular employees it has not looked like a surgical
| political - not performance - play. From what I've seen.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| That's how salesforce did it. One way you can tell how
| terribly uninformed the layoff choices were is that there
| were people who were actually rehired immediately.
| hinkley wrote:
| I charge 3x my hourly rate and a two hour minimum to talk
| to anyone who laid me off.
|
| If I worked somewhere that I loved that much that I'd
| even entertain the idea of coming back, I'd probably be
| too gutted to talk to them about it.
| Rustwerks wrote:
| This is a legal thing. If you do a layoff it's for business
| reasons and you can avoid all of the PIP and such. But if
| you do it that way you can't select based upon performance.
| hinkley wrote:
| Isn't this why some people are so into performative work?
| In a layoff the people they suspect might be
| underperforming go onto the list. They keep the people
| who look good on paper, the ones who play the game.
|
| Not the "untapped" people the author is talking about.
| rixthefox wrote:
| That's exactly it. The untapped people are actually
| getting bunched into the "underperforming" category
| because in the eyes of the beancounter they are not
| meeting some benign performance metric that the company
| wants to see.
|
| Say I'm a phone support company. I have a script I want
| my employees to follow and the average support time per
| phone call should be anywhere between 15-30 minutes.
| Sally Sue is on the phone for the full 8 hours and
| handles 16 calls a day. Billy Brass is on the phone for 4
| hours of the day but handles double the amount of calls a
| day.
|
| To the bean counters Billy is underperforming because he
| only spends 4 hours time on the phone and the company
| only makes money for the amount of time they can keep
| people on the phone. In this example it doesn't matter
| that Billy is an all-star because he completed more
| calls, he's underperforming because he's not following
| the script that should keep people on the phone for as
| long as possible.
|
| The point is that Billy will feel resentful because even
| though he's able to help more people in less time he's
| getting penalized so Billy has less incentive to go above
| and beyond and in fact needs to degrade his workflow to
| fit someone else's metrics. So Billy becomes "untapped"
| because the company has restricted his autonomy. He "CAN"
| do more but that's not what the company wants from him so
| he will choose not to do it even if it's to the benefit
| of the company.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| That's how I see it as well. In a layoff, the role is being
| eliminated as opposed to a person being fired. So they cut
| entire teams working on "unprofitable" products or certain
| roles deemed "redundant" within the product. You typically
| have the option to take a severance or apply for another
| role internally.
|
| This is my understanding based purely on my experience
| getting laid off once - so take it with a huge grain of
| salt. The product I was working on was shutdown. I got paid
| a retainer to stay until the product can be properly wound
| down. Then got hired into a different role in a different
| team with a pay bump within a month. I got to keep the
| retainer as well - as long as I support the wind down
| efforts.
| ghaff wrote:
| I wrote a comment on some other thread but there's just a
| lot of wrong place/wrong time at an individual level. If a
| company is doing a substantial layoff there just isn't the
| time, energy, or resources to train and fit people who may
| be generically "better" at some level into roles that
| already have people presumably doing adequate jobs filling
| them.
|
| People are not fungible. Someone can be in a role where
| they're really valuable. But the company evolves and roles
| evolve and the needs are different. Sure, they might be
| able to excel in a new role eventually--but maybe it's not
| optimal to try to make them fit especially at a senior
| level.
| mulmen wrote:
| Ok then why do we still have recruiters and HR? If their
| job is impossible why do we pay them to pretend
| otherwise? If people aren't fungible why do we force them
| into fungible roles?
|
| If the reality is that people are fungible and leadership
| is just out of touch and made bad decisions then they're
| the ones that should be canned.
|
| Hiring people is expensive. Firing people is expensive.
| Reorganizing people requires competent leadership.
| godelski wrote:
| The part I'm confused at is it doesn't seem that they are
| doomed, and end up being very successful companies. But I
| think this is likely due to lack of competition.
|
| I recently did an internship at one of these big companies,
| doing ML. I'm a researcher but had a production role. Coming
| in everything was really weird to me from how they setup
| their machines to training and evaluation. I brought up that
| the way they were measuring their performance was wrong and
| could tell they overfit their data. They didn't believe me.
| But then it came to be affecting my role. So I fixed it,
| showed them, and then they were like "oh thanks, but we're
| moving on to transformers now." Main part of what I did is
| actually make their model robust and actually work on their
| customer data! (I constantly hear that "industry is better
| because we have customers so it has to work" but I'm waiting
| to see things work like promised...) Of course, their
| transformer model took way more to train and had all the same
| problems, but were hidden a few levels deeper due to them
| dramatically scaling data and model size.
|
| I knew the ML research community had been overly focused on
| benchmarks but didn't realize how much worse it was in
| production environments. It just seems that metric hacking is
| the explicitly stated goal here. But I can't trust anyone to
| make ML models that themselves are metric hackers. The part
| that got me though is that I've always been told by industry
| people that if I added value to the company and made products
| better that the work (and thus I) would be valued. I did in
| an uncontestable manner, and I did not in an uncontestable
| way. I just thought we could make cool products AND make
| money at the same time. Didn't realize there was far more
| weight to the latter than the former. I know, I'm naive.
| riskable wrote:
| > due to lack of competition.
|
| So let's compete! What are they selling? What prevents
| competitors from springing up?
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| No connection to OP, but user base and network effect if
| I know modern online giants at all.
| godelski wrote:
| Yeah this is part of the issue with that particular
| product, the other is the initial capital. But also, the
| project itself was a bit too authoritarian style creepy
| so I'd rather not. But I've seen the exact same issues in
| MANY other products (I mean I could have told you rabbit
| or humane pin would be shit. In fact, I believe I even
| stated that on HN if not joked about it in person. I
| happily shit on plenty of papers too, and do so here)
|
| I think what a lot of people don't understand is that
| there's criticism and dismissing. I'm an ML researcher, I
| criticize works because I want our field to be better and
| because I believe in ML, not because I'm against it. I
| think people confuse this. I'll criticize GPT all day,
| while also using it every day.
| godelski wrote:
| Mostly capital? Honestly, I have no idea how to get
| initial capital. Yeah, I know what site we're on lol. But
| I'm not from a top university and honestly I'd like to
| focus on actual AGI not this LLM stuff (LLMs are great,
| but lol they won't scale to AGI). Which arguably, if
| someone is wanting to compete in that space, why throw
| more money at a method that is prolific and so many have
| a head start? But they're momentum limited, throw me a
| few million and we can try new things. Don't even need
| half of what some of these companies are getting to
| produce shit that we all should know is shit and going to
| be shit from the get go.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Regulatory capture, regulations in general, patents that
| shouldn't have been granted, lawfare, access to capital..
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Peoplw conceptualize businesses likr some super organism that
| should try to maximize the quality of its products.
|
| In reality, it most.often maximizes its executives lives
| while minimizing all other forms of frictions.
|
| Everyone whose worked with small businesses will rscognize
| this pattern easily. Uts only when you get a few e?tra
| executives that the equation itself gets comolicated, but its
| still typically about maximizing the executives livlihood.
| hankchinaski wrote:
| I have been doing this for years and I think it's the best
| output per hour worked strategy if you have a clear exit plan
| outside scaling the so-called ladder
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > if you have a clear exit plan outside scaling the so-called
| ladder
|
| Exit plan is FIRE. Everything else is circus and performance
| art. Others can play status games, I prefer wealth games:
| wealth is options and options are freedom.
|
| Pragmatic, smart, skilled people are extracted from unless
| lucky and in a position to see outsized returns from their
| effort. Better to know what enough is, collect enough freedom
| coins, and enjoy the one go you get at life.
|
| (n=1, ymmv, "show me the incentives, and I'll show you the
| outcome")
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I think that is a great plan and good advice, but you may
| find as you continue in your career that you enjoy work
| more. When I was starting out I was always tired, anxious
| and frustrated. Now I would never even get hired for those
| kinds of jobs (or take them). You may get to a point where
| you have a lot more power and discretion at work and enjoy
| it. There's a lot to be said for working at jobs you enjoy.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I hope to one day find meaningful work I am compensated
| for, or have accumulated enough wealth such that
| compensation is no longer relevant. Thanks for the reply.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| I enjoy my work as well.
|
| But I realize that things outside my control can force me
| into a poor working situation any day.
| iopq wrote:
| Too late, FIRE'd at 30, never enjoyed work
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| I had a bit of an epiphany when I read this comment since
| you hit the nail on the head so succinctly.
|
| Wealth is the only true path that gives you options. All
| other paths are dependent on income.
|
| There really is no other exit plan except financial
| security. Every other plan is just putting you into the
| walls a new rat maze.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| My path to discovering this was costly and fraught with
| suffering. I hope by sharing, your experience is less so.
| The sooner you learn, the sooner you can modify your
| trajectory for a more favorable outcome. I wish you
| freedom.
| robocat wrote:
| True wealth has a lot of non-financial measures.
|
| Non-financial goals are way way harder to achieve than
| FIRE: the biggest issue is selecting your non-financial
| goals. Money is a simple goal and it isn't impossible to
| achieve - then what?
|
| Deciding that money should be your primary focus
| overoptimises for financial wealth against non-financial
| wealth.
|
| For example, life satisfaction: do you know people doing
| jobs they love? People that would continue their calling
| even if it didn't pay them? Try to understand their
| wealth even if they don't have the financial freedom a
| successful business can give you. The main problem is
| most of those jobs are not in businesses and it is hard
| to understand things we haven't experienced. Jobs are a
| very poor example but you get the idea.
|
| I've retired early: for me personally, financial wealth
| is not enough.
|
| One limited resource that we are approximately all given
| the same amount of is time - you get fifty years between
| 20 and 70 to use the best you can. I think most people
| don't use their limited resource very well (even those
| that optimise their time well seem to use it poorly on
| bad meta-goals).
| zer00eyz wrote:
| Did you get cut cause "we need a number" and you're expensive?
|
| Were you the growth guy when they need run the busies blood and
| guts people?
|
| Did they save 2 people in some other department who matter more
| with some horse trading?
|
| You can go and be a clock puncher. It's perfectly fine to do
| so. I know plenty of them, some got laid off recently and cant
| seem to find jobs. The high achiever's the go the extra mile
| types who are LIKED (dont be an asshole) are all working
| already.
|
| Down vote me all you want. I was here for the first (2000) tech
| flop. The people who went the extra mile and some safe and
| secure corporates were the ones who made it. Coming out the
| other side (the ad tech, Web 2.0 boom) there were a lot of
| talented, ambitious, hard working people around. Any one who
| wasnt that ended up in another field that made them happy.
| creesch wrote:
| It's all well and good to include a disclaimer about
| downvotes. But, it is somewhat irrelevant, as the reason you
| are most likely to be downvoted is not because you are
| touching on a sensitive subject. They are downvoting you
| because your argument makes it very clear you actually
| haven't read the article.
| diob wrote:
| Might want to think a bit about survivorship bias and see how
| it might apply.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| Thats the point.
|
| Who survives in a down turn?
|
| It's not the folks who are "pragmatic" its not the folks
| who give up...
|
| You work with two people, Bob who punches the clock and
| Bill who puts in the time to get the extra work done. You
| move on to a new job and your boss says "we need someone
| new on your team, Bob and Bill are here".
|
| You're not picking Bob, Bill gets your vote.
|
| Dont be an asshlole be known as at the hard worker, be
| helpful (maybe have to do some extra work)... your going to
| get picked when people are looking. Your old boss is part
| of your network, and so are your peers (who might end up
| your boss)...
|
| All those people who are survivors, who put in extra work,
| have strong networks who know that they are strong hires in
| a tight market.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Been there. Done that. Doing the work of five people
| because I was the survivor and the others got a severance
| package was no fun. I could only pull it off for six
| months before being burned out.
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _You 're not picking Bob, Bill gets your vote._
|
| In the layoffs I've been through, it's just as often that
| it is Bob who gets the vote.
|
| Not for any reason, it's just random. Bill rolled a 1
| somewhere, in that layoff. Better luck next time ... if
| there is a next time.
|
| Nobody is picking. Nobody is choosing, or making rational
| decisions. Just one day, hey, this entire subtree of the
| org is just simply laid off -- individual performance had
| nothing to do with it. Or other versions of this that are
| just equally as obviously random.
|
| Yes, the survivors might have put in the extra work. But
| what the person above you is saying is that that wasn't
| _why_ they survived.
| samatman wrote:
| It seems you missed a beat here.
|
| The comment you're replying to isn't talking about the
| layoff round. It's talking about what happens next, when
| someone from the team gets hired elsewhere and the boss
| says "we need more people". Who gets brought in?
|
| This is a very common scenario in our line of work.
| mavelikara wrote:
| If it so happens that that company was wrong in what they did,
| you run the risk of optimizing for the wrong things based on
| one bad observation. The company doesn't care. The negatives
| only affect your career.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Yep. After being laid off, I decided that I am best working
| with the diligence of a Boeing QA engineer. Do the bare minimum
| and use overemployment to flee the work world as fast as
| possible.
| folsom wrote:
| That is why I work like I get paid, a little bit on Fridays.
| twojobsoneboss wrote:
| Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That's why I poop, on
| company time.
| Pepe1vo wrote:
| That was a rhyme from a simpler time. Now the boss makes a
| grand and I make a buck. So, let's steal the catalytic
| converter from the company truck.
| szundi wrote:
| What about not fucking up your life and find a good comany to
| work for?
| lazide wrote:
| Since this is always relative, that's like 'why not just be
| rich?' isn't it?
|
| The devil is in the details and the 'how'.
| serf wrote:
| That's a hard pill to swallow after years and years of the
| same routine 'unsuccesses' , and it relies on the personal
| belief that A decent life cannot be lead without success in
| finance and business; I believe that's simply not the case.
| redserk wrote:
| How is this "fucking up [their] life"?
|
| Some people don't care about the grindset or putting in 50hr
| weeks. As long as work gets done and you're reasonably
| keeping your skills up to date, what does it matter?
|
| If anything it's more of a win by gaining hours of your life
| back that would've been spent people-pleasing.
| swader999 wrote:
| You'd do better to go work hard for their competitors or create
| one.
| cyberbender wrote:
| I've seen this firsthand...I think it is less of an issue at
| smaller companies where taking initiative and leaning into their
| intelligence is less politically restricted. At large
| organizations, often it requires too much energy for them
| navigate the bureaucracy and tap into their potential.
| DylanDmitri wrote:
| Breaks down to: (1) build trust with your people, then (2) give
| them autonomy to guide their own work. The inverse of "Seeing
| Like a State".
| mlhpdx wrote:
| That's the magic. I'm not sure why so many fight this simple,
| reliable approach.
| clintonc wrote:
| This reads as a cynical description by someone who identifies as
| a "skilled pragmatist" (as I do, incidentally), but it doesn't
| seem to have a useful point of view. For example, "playing the
| system" and "making waves" have other names -- "driving
| initiatives" and "cross-team collaboration". They seem like
| "mushy" phrases because they are not well-defined sets of tasks
| like "deliver feature A" can become.
|
| Are skilled pragmatists undervalued? Maybe, but this article
| doesn't do an good job of making me believe that.
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| As much as I dislike politics, honestly, it sounds like he was
| out-maneuvered by someone who works less hard. Think Frank
| Grimes.
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't think I can agree that 75% of the workforce falls into
| one quadrant. Particularly this one.
|
| If I'm very lucky the semi space contains 60% of my coworkers, if
| I'm unlucky (or arrive after the writing is on the wall) it's
| more like 1/3.
|
| I suspect part of the confusion is that there are some people
| with enough political acumen to appear like frustrated agents of
| change without actually having the drive or skill to do so. If
| you create opportunities for these people to show up, you may be
| shocked to find them making excuses for why they still can't.
|
| And truthfully the industry is not full of untapped brilliant
| people. It isn't even "full" of brilliant people period. maybe
| 1/4 of the human population could be counted as very smart, and
| we get a disproportionate share of them for sure, but it's
| _definitely_ not more than half.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Even that's a very high estimate.
|
| Maybe there are 8 million bonafide geniuses on Earth, and maybe
| 80 million very smart people, at max.
|
| And being very generous to the US, maybe a tenth of them are
| full time residents somewhere in the 50 states plus DC.
|
| Claims that a meaningfully large portion of them are being
| 'wasted', are hard to believe since there aren't that many to
| begin with.
| hinkley wrote:
| To be clear, I feel the author is describing me, and the
| loneliness and alienation I have felt too often at work tells
| me he's using a lot of hyperbole.
|
| If we form a lunch group to complain about our frustrations,
| it's never been more than about four people, even in a team
| of dozens or more. Three is more common.
|
| That said, he may be telling the truth with lies - this sort
| of untapped resource can have outsized impacts on a business,
| for good or ill.
| bjornsing wrote:
| > maybe 1/4 of the human population could be counted as very
| smart
|
| That's a very generous assessment. To me someone who's
| "brilliant" is more like 1/1000.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Yeah agree, I have worked with tons of smart people, talented
| people, people whose parents had them coding in elementary
| school, but only one person I would consider brilliant.
|
| It was jarring how he instantly understood any line of
| reasoning I was going down. There was no need for context or
| lengthy background explanations, he would just see what you
| were doing. That was in most areas also, politics,
| programming, philosophy, etc.
|
| It was refreshing because conveying information to him was
| effortless, he needed like 20% of the info that is usually
| required when explaining something to another person. I don't
| know how one could achieve that other than just being gifted
| at absorbing and processing information.
| hinkley wrote:
| He was probably an HSP, which by some estimates is 15% of
| the population. HSP plus high IQ makes up a lot of people
| you would label "scary smart".
| all2 wrote:
| What is "HSP"?
| bena wrote:
| "Highly sensitive person". Basically hypervigilant
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I don't even think Pragmatists are "smart", or if they are it
| shows it self in the non-book ways. I'd be more inclined to
| describe them as "clever". If you've heard the "Smart, and gets
| stuff done" ideal, they're more of the latter.
| hinkley wrote:
| I would propose it's the old "wisdom vs intelligence"
| problem.
|
| The pragmatist has a better grasp on can vs should.
| kerblang wrote:
| I agree: It's not 75%. But you're suddenly substituting the
| word "brilliant" for "pragmatic" and that's kinda questionable.
| It might be that you define brilliant differently than some
| others, so that IQ is much less significant than pragmatism
| itself in your equation of brilliance; but if you think IQ ->
| pragmatic, I disagree. I think they're orthogonal.
| hinkley wrote:
| Yeah that might have been a poor word choice or projection on
| my part.
|
| As I replied elsewhere, I feel I am in this quadrant and I
| often actively look for sympathetic people among bosses and
| peers to talk to about it. If there are more than ten people
| I have someone to talk to, but it's never been anywhere near
| 75%. And one time I got a very rude awakening when I
| discovered several of those people were all sizzle and no
| sausage.
| kerblang wrote:
| Okay, good. As authentic "pragmatism" goes, the author
| conveys a sense of cynical pragmatist-in-waiting rather
| than activist pragmatist-in-action; I _would_ do the
| pragmatic thing, and yes, I 'm smart enough, but not if
| there's risk. So, you're surrounded by invisible
| pragmatists, but these are the kind of pragmatists who
| sometimes burn you for profit outright, but mostly just
| look the other way while someone else does it - if that's
| where the money is. Well, yeah, but what else is new?
| ultrasaurus wrote:
| Maybe 75% of the people _who interact with the kind of person
| who blogs about institutional efficiency for the HN audience_
| hate conflict but love their craft. Maybe on a good day.
|
| The top 3 jobs in the US are home health care, retail sales and
| fast food. Not to denigrate any of those roles but I can't
| imagine 75% of them saying "X is her passion, but she's not
| about to burn a lot of social capital by rocking the boat".
| (I'm skipping over the "skilled" part, but substitute
| accountants & project managers and I still don't see getting to
| 75%)
| keybored wrote:
| TFA said
|
| > The biggest source of waste is untapped skilled pragmatists.
|
| Nothing about brilliant there. Just skilled and pragmatic.
|
| You're trying to cool head/cold shower the idea but you're just
| substituing the narrative for HN's favorite pastime of talking
| about high IQ/brilliance for the sake of it.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| To me, pragmatism is set of knives by which I decide what to
| leave on the cutting room floor. The biggest one I have is that
| there are only so many hours in a day but more issues on the
| board than can fit into it. The second one is that my time
| billable, and anything that doesnt count towards my utilization
| is de facto not valued by the company.
|
| The overrunning theme seems to be 'how do we get more from a
| pragmatist' but my response is you can look at my todo list and
| rearrange it whenever you want. I am happy with my work, the
| metrics are on target, the feedback I get from clients is great
| and they ask for me on their future projects. Only one person is
| unahppy and its the guy who squints at spreadsheets all day. I
| think he is the one who is wrong.
| netbioserror wrote:
| Interesting model. Reminds me of all the methods of breaking down
| game players (e.g. honers vs. innovators, Jimmys vs. Timmys,
| etc.). I'm very lucky to work at a small shop that can't afford
| the other three sectors; there are too few of us, each of us
| needs to impactfully improve our part of the product stack. In
| fact, we each basically have full ownership of our part of the
| product stack. Yes, I know, bus factor. But when we're a team of
| 7 with a fair number of software components all connected
| together, each one needs a clear vision. Also luckily, we do team
| interviews; it's fairly easy for us to suss out BS and identify
| matching competent people who fit the pragmatist mold.
| klabb3 wrote:
| Insanely spot on, for once (most of organizational analyses are
| not).
|
| Another fun thing pointed out in the article is the obsession
| over weeding out poor performers, ie the lazy ones. My theory is
| that it's done solely to scare everyone else to work harder,
| whatever that means exactly. It's about creating a culture of
| constant busyness which is only really a good proxy for work in
| domains that don't require long term thinking. For engineers,
| it's detrimental.
|
| If you wanna go after the ones who are contributing the least
| value, why obsess over the lazy? There are sooo many examples of
| people who added huge negative value, from the rockstars who
| create an unmaintainable mess to some product manager that re-
| steers the ship and changes something that was completely fine
| the way it was. Especially when they leave the mess behind which
| opportunists often do. Dead weight is nothing compared to the
| whales that swim towards the bottom and drag the rest of them
| down.
| zamalek wrote:
| Very recently two other engineers had a long debate on a PR of
| mine that really had no material impact one way or another. My
| approach rang true with the article: "they can sort it out."
|
| I do enjoy a certain degree of challenge at work, though, to be
| more precise less anti-challenge (high friction, high ceremony
| work). I will invent work, especially if I'm experiencing paper-
| cuts: e.g. I spend a stupid amount of time improving CI speed.
| It's thankless and invisible, but makes the mundane more bearable
| (nothing is worse than trying to push mundane work through flaky
| CI).
|
| Edit: this entire perspective comes from having given a _huge_
| damn at one point. The one-sided relationship with an employer
| taught me the inevitable, and very hard, lesson. Barry is one
| acquisition away from becoming Maria.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| It feels like a common institutional problem is the people who
| push more of their identity into the institution get
| disproportionately rewarded over time for their (sometimes ill-
| considered) sacrifice, which causes them to seek out other people
| like them, which causes the org to select for that over time. And
| other people see this, respond with, "I don't want that," and put
| up boundaries like you see discussed here.
|
| Orgs love to say they like results, and they do -- to a certain
| extent. There's a ceiling on it that isn't there if you are coded
| by other people as One Of Us. This is wholly different from being
| a yes-man, of course. It can't be too obvious you're playing this
| game or people don't like it...probably because it reminds some
| people of the gamble they're making there. I'll wager that some
| people are honest enough to say, "well how else should we treat
| loyalty?" And others would say, "well that's what they chose for
| their life, so they should be rewarded." Both answers really just
| serve to entrench no-life-ism, though.
|
| IMO, hovering on the border of engagement/disengagement is not a
| problem. People tend to oscillate back and forth there naturally.
| Work is fundamentally a transactional relationship that can
| sometimes confer meaning, intellectual stimulation, social
| connections, and structure. And sometimes it fails at some or all
| of those.
|
| Expecting it to always provide those things is delusional.
| Keeping the transactional nature in mind without being a jerk
| keeps expectations grounded. We should be far more suspicious of
| those who are constantly parading their love of work on social
| media.
| TheGRS wrote:
| This post is an introduction to the idea and then as a Part 2 for
| actions to take. For anyone who hasn't continued into Part 2, it
| goes into first steps on listening to different performers in
| your company and basically doing research on what makes everyone
| tick. There will be a follow-up Part 3. Just want to say that's
| an interesting way to blog, but a little unsatisfying since I'm
| not sure if I'll keep coming back for new updates every week.
|
| Interesting topic though! I consider myself both self-motivated
| and a little lazy at heart so I think I fall into the skilled
| pragmatist. For me personally it was that realization that I
| wasn't going to be the 4.0 student, but that I could still get a
| great 3.5 by doing a lot less work. Sometimes I crank out tons of
| extra work that helps various people by the simple virtue that
| its interesting to me. So I think this is hitting a chord with me
| somewhere.
|
| I find myself in management these days, and the people I manage
| are all great and talented and as far as I can tell no one is
| upset with my laissez-faire management style. But I'm always
| wanting to find how to make the job more interesting for them.
| The roadmap can often be kind of boring work. When we have
| interesting projects the work just flies by and you can see the
| satisfaction on everyone's faces. Would love to just have more of
| that.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I'd categorize myself as a "Barry" - which he seems to define in
| part II of this blog post as someone who is willing to take great
| personal and career risks to rock the boat, and will even risk
| getting fired to get their job done - it has usually cost me a
| lot in whatever organization I end up in. I think these people
| eventually become skilled pragmatists when burnt out, but I'm not
| sure he has any insight in these posts about how people become a
| "Maria."
|
| IMO it's when Barry's finally realize that working their ass off
| and taking risk for the betterment of a company or leadership
| team that will not hesitate to take advantage of a Barry and/or
| ruthlessly cut him down when convenient. I guess by author's
| definition if a Barry became a Maria, he was never a Barry to
| begin with, but I do think this happens a lot. I see it in my own
| career path, with myself and some of my peers.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Enployees need three things to avoid becoming an uninspired cog:
|
| 1) Control
|
| 2) Responsibility
|
| 3) Recognition
|
| Control and responsibility of a project but no recognition will
| demotivate quickly
|
| Responsibility and recognition with no control means they're a
| scapegoat for when things bad
|
| Recognition and control with no responsibility is like a third
| party who will take credit but has no reason to ensure success
|
| All three need to happen for an employee to care. If an employee
| is missing one or two of the three, they'll feel it in their work
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| But the greatest of these things is Control.
| __experiment__ wrote:
| there are different people who value different things.
|
| some value more control
|
| some value more responsibility
|
| some value more recognition
| tuckerpo wrote:
| This puts the cart before the horse. In reality, the biggest
| source of untapped potential, at least anecdotally as an
| engineer, is that corporations tend to give grease to squeaky
| wheels. So, the upper quadrants in the article.
|
| If you have even a few years of industry experience, modulo being
| intentionally naive, you've noticed that work begets work. The
| 'skilled pragmatists' quietly do their jobs well. Their reward is
| even more work to do, without much recognition.
|
| It's analogous to software quality. It's fleetingly rare that a
| consumer of software writes in to let you know how great, zippy
| and bug-free it is. You only ever hear about how terrible things
| are. When things are 'good' -- that's just the expected status
| quo. So no reward for steadily doing good things.
|
| I'm also sure after a few years in industry you've also noticed
| that the Do-Nothing (TM) guy who sprints around with their head
| on fire gets managerial recognition, promotions, bonuses.
|
| You know the kind. They wander from meeting to meeting,
| initiative to initiative, never actually accomplishing anything
| concrete, but showing their face to management and saying a lot
| of nice words.
|
| Eventually, the skilled pragmatist notices this dichotomy and
| mentally clocks out. I've heard this anecdote many times, both in
| online circles and IRL.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Very true. As an added detail, I see it comes in waves. New
| CTO/CIO brings in his trusted lieutenants who then bring in
| their trusted people. They may excel at XYZ but at your company
| those skills are irrelevant. Some folks who are already on
| staff hitch their wagon to the new powers that be. These
| johnny-come-latelys are also insufferable. The game continues
| until the CTO/CIO is let go and another house cleaning begins.
| During the meantime, you wonder how any real work gets done.
| pnathan wrote:
| Competence and promotions are two different skillsets,
| sometimes they intersect.
|
| I've been swept up into some of the promo-optimized guys'
| orbits, and it was deeply unpleasant. Lots of smoke and mirrors
| to execs...
|
| Good leadership optimizes for looking at ground truths, rather
| than yes-men. Some places succeed at that more than others...
| dbrueck wrote:
| Part of me feels like the untapped potential is just one of many
| symptoms of all of the dysfunction going on, and if you can fix
| some of the dysfunction, then you'd not only unleash some of that
| potential but fix a bunch of other problems at the same time.
| NateEag wrote:
| This is an appealing narrative without evidence.
|
| How does the author know Marias make up the majority of most
| companies? Where's the data supporting that claim?
|
| It may be true - it sounds plausible to those of us who've been a
| Maria in the salt mines of a dysfunctional company.
|
| It appeals to us to think we're the hidden gems the company needs
| to invest in.
|
| Something being appealing doesn't make it true, though, even if
| you can tell a just-so story about it.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| > This is an appealing narrative without evidence.
|
| I had the same thought, but I'm grateful to the author for
| putting their opinions out for us to see.
|
| It is an interesting quandary - getting "more" from someone,
| pragmatic or otherwise, raises questions. Is the premise that
| they aren't providing value on a level with salary? Or, is it
| that the business has a right/obligation to extract more? The
| latter is offensive, fundamentally because "value" may be
| arbitrarily (perhaps capriciously) determined.
|
| On the other hand, I find the folks suggesting that doing an
| hours work a day is fine. It's not. That's equally offensive.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Labor relations are intrinsically adversarial. The employer
| wants to pay as little as they can get away with for as much
| work as possible, the employee wants to be paid as much as
| possible for as little work as they can get away with.
|
| This article is written for the employer's side, trying to
| optimize their game. The employees trying to normalize
| working approximately nothing are optimizing their side.
|
| It's not offensive, it's just economics.
| bb88 wrote:
| Many employees are trying to minimize their work. (Do we
| really need to fill out 10 TPS reports that no one reads?)
| Often the ones who are doing the most menial tasks would
| definitely want to do something else more meaningful
|
| Not everyone wants to work less. Many want a path to make
| an impact to the organization, but don't see how. They'd
| rather just be quiet engineers/accountants/office
| workers/etc.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| As an employer/owner/investor I'm not trying to minimize
| expenses I'm trying to maximize growth/value. Abusing
| people is not a path to success by that metric.
| lucianbr wrote:
| There's some useful insight here even if the percents are
| wrong. Whatever the numbers, even if 10% are Marias, they're
| still an untapped resource, if not "the biggest". And the fact
| that some of us have been this person proves the percentage is
| not zero.
|
| Feels like you found a small inaccuracy in the text, and jumped
| up "Aha! Everything you said is wrong!". Also an appealing
| narrative.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, everyone is nit-picking the numbers... Where's the
| evidence? Where's the citations? Not everything is a paper in
| an academic publication. The quadrants themselves hold up and
| anecdotally match my experiences over decades of work. I can
| easily remember people I've worked with in each quadrant, and
| yes, the lower-right (whatever percent they are) are totally
| underutilized and mostly invisible.
| imzadi wrote:
| I don't know if this is related, but growing up there were
| certain values instilled in me that went something like "don't
| toot your own horn," "it's better to be seen and not heard,"
| "keep your head down," etc. The main gist being that I should
| just do my job quietly, competently, and stay out of the way.
|
| In practice, this resulted in me being effectively invisible to
| management, even when I was out-performing everyone else on the
| team. The guys who were loud and boisterous and constantly cawing
| about their achievements got all the raises and promotions, even
| though I was consistently doing more and better work. This came
| to a head when someone with far less seniority was promoted over
| me. I brought it up with my boss who said something like "I don't
| even know what you do all day. I never hear from you." The guy
| who was promoted would literally spend twice as much time
| boasting about what he was doing that actually doing it. I was
| objectively more productive, as in, there were metrics showing my
| productivity was significantly higher, but since I wasn't talking
| about what I was doing, I was unseen.
| meowAJ16 wrote:
| There is no way 80% of people care about craft and impact. There
| are books on creating impact even when employees don't care about
| impact.
|
| It's hard to find people who care about their craft.
| dkarl wrote:
| I strongly buy the premise of this article, and it goes beyond
| people who try to fly under the radar and blend in because of
| toxic politics. Even in companies without toxic politics, a lot
| of managers subconsciously overestimate the abilities of
| engineers who regularly propose ambitious, complex solutions, and
| underestimate the abilities of engineers who are more leery of
| complexity. This not only leads to unnecessary boondoggle
| projects, it also results in managers not assigning challenging
| work to engineers who are quite capable of doing it, which is the
| waste the article describes.
|
| I was fortunate early in my career to have managers who had
| strong technical judgment themselves and rewarded it in their
| engineers, managers who spent their innovation tokens but spent
| them very carefully, so later in my career I was able to
| recognize when I had managers who relied on crude heuristics like
| assuming the engineers who proposed the most complex projects had
| the best judgment and the best ability to execute.
|
| One simple hack I use all the time, regardless of my manager's
| personality, is to say, "It would be fun." As in, "It would be
| fun to handle this with an event-driven system using Kafka. We
| could build an incredibly scalable and resilient system that way.
| I'd love to tackle a project like that, but I don't think we can
| justify it, because it would take more time and more engineers to
| build and be more expensive to operate, and I think our existing
| system only needs a few tweaks to what we need, even if we
| execute on our entire product roadmap and exceed our sales goals.
| I think we should take a careful look at tweaking the existing
| system, and if that won't get us what we need, we might have to
| build the more expensive solution."
|
| This lets me advertise my awareness of a fancier architectural
| solution, as well as my ability and willingness to execute on it,
| without actually saying that it's a good idea.
| billtsedong wrote:
| Honestly if that guy was my manager, I'd quit no matter what. I'm
| already selling 1/3 of my lifetime just to be able to eat, so no
| freaking way I'd contribute to someone already robbing me of the
| most valuable resource one can have.
| chrisgd wrote:
| It's crazy we still hire so slowly and fire so quickly when it
| should be the exact opposite.
| icedchai wrote:
| Many companies are afraid of being sued or "ruining their
| reputation" through too many firings. Instead, they waste much
| more on wasted salaries and ruin their reputation internally by
| keeping useless people around.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| I'm more interested in figuring out what kind of knowledge base
| most reliably turns a junior dev into a "skilled pragmatist".
|
| My guess is the highest ROI thing one can do in software
| engineering is take your command line environment and OS
| internals seriously to heart. This can be either bash/Unix or
| PowerShell/Windows, depending on your career goals, although
| having gotten reasonably good with both sets I'd recommend the
| former. Wherever you go, you'll have that ultra portable
| knowledge to rely on, and do in 10 lol minutes what might take
| your coworkers 20 or 30.
| from-nibly wrote:
| shaving 20 minutes off a task is useless unless it's something
| that happens constantly. The real differentiator will be, do
| you know you can do something, that others in your org think is
| impossible? Can you turn a 6 month project into a half day
| script and move on?
|
| Also there isn't "A knowledge base" that turns a junior dev
| into a "skilled pragmatist". It comes from being a part of
| delivering value all the way up and down the stack. There
| unfortunately isn't a book that can really teach you that. You
| gotta build that in yourself on your own through experience.
| schaefer wrote:
| There are many assertions of facts in this blog article, for
| example: 75% skilled pragmatists. Do any of these facts have
| citations?
|
| Even if the author were to directly state they are his
| observations as a developer, it would have more value than
| absolutely no citation.
|
| As written, these facts are giving me a very made up or "story
| time" vibe.
| namuol wrote:
| The article's thesis is based on the assumption that most
| contributors care a good deal about the business and/or their
| craft. I just don't see that.
| bb88 wrote:
| As the saying goes:
|
| "If you stick your head up above the cube wall, prepare to have
| it decapitated."
| cousin_it wrote:
| I think the root cause of why managers reward flashy employees
| over useful ones is because managers are clueless about the work
| itself. The more a manager understands the work, on a micro
| level, the more they'll be able to judge it accurately. Note that
| it doesn't mean micromanagement: you must understand the details,
| but stop yourself from second-guessing the employees on these
| details. And it doesn't mean you can't delegate: as long as you
| have intimate understanding of the details, you're free to
| delegate and be as hands-off as you want. In fact the best way to
| delegate is to learn to do the thing well yourself, then delegate
| it to someone and do occasional spot checks on them.
| csours wrote:
| I can't give my boss any work they don't want to do.
|
| If I find a problem in another team's domain, I can try to
| interest them in it, and failing that, I can try to interest my
| boss in it, but if no one gets interested enough to fix the
| thing, what am I going to do? Work around the problem and sulk.
|
| See Also: Glue Work
|
| https://noidea.dog/glue
| mtreis86 wrote:
| Biggest waste I see is people arguing over equally good options.
| Flip a coin and go.
| aubanel wrote:
| Putting "cut-throat bureaucrats" in the "do not care for impact"
| side of the axis seems unnatural to me: I think these people do
| care for impact, and that's why they are so decided about
| imposing their ways. But their definition of impact is "doing
| things the right way", which corrupts their want for improvement
| into a pile of processes.
| gr4vityWall wrote:
| I fail to see how trying to get more out of Maria would make any
| thing better for Maria herself.
| analog31 wrote:
| ... And she knows it.
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