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Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

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Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#61

Post by teknopaul »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #3

My happiness in a job is inversely proportional to the diligence with which they track time and estimations.

I need a task list, I need to prioritise, so I publish that list on a wiki along with done/blocked/remarks. Each task ~1 day

Once this is done (with a few blocked items that are manglement responsibility) I never get asked for estimates, or worse, Jira issues.

It's not unreasonable that management want to know what you are doing and how long it will take. Make that easy for them in a way that suits you, and it stops being a burden.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#62

Post by teknopaul »

lrvick wrote: post #42
dugmartin wrote: post #13

Mine is when human beings working at the company start becoming referred to as “resources” instead of people.

Once a CEO giving a tour of the engineering department to a potential investor and loudly described us as the monkeys that hammer out code for him. This was never forgotten and marked the beginning of a major engineering exodus.

Oook. I consider myself to be a code monkey and divide the jobs I'm given in to one, two or three banana jobs. (indicating complexity)

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#63

Post by wnkrshm »

lrvick wrote: post #43
Mandatum wrote: post #38

https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear... Once they cut benefits that are widely lauded. Holiday-free PTO, exercise and health benefits, stuff that makes sense to anyone to attract talent when times are tough. You can cut corners, you can cut bonuses when times are tough - but you can't cut benefits. It's a short-term way of thinking, and you'll lose your best employees over it.

Two companies I worked at went to shit shortly after free lunches got the axe.

I feel the opposite way, it's not rational but when my work gives me all kinds of amenities like that, I feel like some sort of pet in a zoo.

What are lunches and gyms and all kinds of dumb peanuts in contrast to health care and stability.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#64

Post by afarrell »

brnt wrote: post #29
taffronaut wrote: post #5

Every time I take a can of soda from the fridge, I replace it with two. I exhort my colleagues to do the same. However we have yet to reach my goal of 2^64 cans which makes me suspect there are some bad apples.

Self sacrifice by emptying the fridge of soda might be someone who cares deeply about his colleagues' health.

And who believes that his colleagues’ health is their responsibility to the point of trying to change the culture.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#65

Post by wiredfool »

ehnto wrote: post #15
quickthrower2 wrote: post #3

My happiness in a job is inversely proportional to the diligence with which they track time and estimations.

It is a massive drain on morale. Billable hours sure, but tracking non-billable hours is just making management's job my job. I the impact it has is regularly underestimated.

I want to know unbillable time, because coordination overhead and other crap can grow and eat into productive time.

We put in sprints and standups (in a small co, With 2n projects) at one point, and tracking made us realize that this ceremony was costing us 15% of our time and maybe giving us 1% utility.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#66

Post by necovek »

dusted wrote: post #58
necovek wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can certainly do both, but you shouldn't. People are not resources: each one of them will do different work and different amount of work. They are never interchangeable, and they don't even behave the same over time. A frustrated or bored "resource" will do lesser work, but as long as you refer to them as a resource, you'll miss on that nuance. It's not that hard to consider them people, possibly even people by n…

> People are not resources: each one of them will do different work and different amount of work. Different people have different resources, when you allocate a resource, you're allocating something someone can do, not something they can't do.. When you put resources on a project, the people follow along, since they're the ones with the resource in demand. I've never understood the resource as referring to a person,…

Even then, your "C++ resource" will perform completely differently based on the person they are: eg. a junior C++ engineer will be slower than a mid/senior engineer, and an engineer providing a more maintainable solution might be slower too (and somebody un/familiar with the problem domain or API in use).

I don't see how planning work for a "C++ resource" helps other than faking it over and over again.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#67

Post by hk__2 »

necovek wrote: post #66
dusted wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are not resources: each one of them will do different work and different amount of work. Different people have different resources, when you allocate a resource, you're allocating something someone can do, not something they can't do.. When you put resources on a project, the people follow along, since they're the ones with the resource in demand. I've never understood the resource as referring to a person,…

Even then, your "C++ resource" will perform completely differently based on the person they are: eg. a junior C++ engineer will be slower than a mid/senior engineer, and an engineer providing a more maintainable solution might be slower too (and somebody un/familiar with the problem domain or API in use). I don't see how planning work for a "C++ resource" helps other than faking it over and over again.

In my specific case we all have roughly the same experience with each technology so it’s fine to consider people as interchangeable. Of course that doesn’t mean we don’t take preferences into account; it’s just to have a rough idea of our roadmap and know if we need to recruit.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#68

Post by quickthrower2 »

teknopaul wrote: post #61
quickthrower2 wrote: post #3

My happiness in a job is inversely proportional to the diligence with which they track time and estimations.

I need a task list, I need to prioritise, so I publish that list on a wiki along with done/blocked/remarks. Each task ~1 day Once this is done (with a few blocked items that are manglement responsibility) I never get asked for estimates, or worse, Jira issues. It's not unreasonable that management want to know what you are doing and how long it will take. Make that easy for them in a way that suits you, and it stops…

If you can get away with just that, it is definitely the happier end of the spectrum.

Most organisations have a tao and it’s fit in or fuck off. So if they use Jira then so do the staff. And being scolded for a ticket status not being updated can be a thing.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#69

Post by dusted »

hk__2 wrote: post #67
necovek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even then, your "C++ resource" will perform completely differently based on the person they are: eg. a junior C++ engineer will be slower than a mid/senior engineer, and an engineer providing a more maintainable solution might be slower too (and somebody un/familiar with the problem domain or API in use). I don't see how planning work for a "C++ resource" helps other than faking it over and over again.

In my specific case we all have roughly the same experience with each technology so it’s fine to consider people as interchangeable. Of course that doesn’t mean we don’t take preferences into account; it’s just to have a rough idea of our roadmap and know if we need to recruit.

I agree.

Also, if people are so uniquely skilled that each and every task can only be made by a specific person (excuse me, "human being") then your bus-factor is 1 and a single person leaving, getting sick (or indeed, hit by a bus) means death for the project.. That's terrible.

It's entirely reasonable to think of work and people using separate terms, I'd argue it's probably healthy too.. Now, that's not the same as ignoring personal preferences where they apply, for instance, when allocating resources to a task or project, of course, consideration should be taken when possible, "oh, person X hates doing this, but Y loves it, sure, X is slightly stronger at it, but we let Y do it, then they're happier and Y gets stronger too"

I consider myself as being around a 1.3x javascript resource for backend, a 0.8x for frontend, and around a 0.5x resource for C++ (meaning I'll spend twice the amount of time doing the same task as someone I consider a 1x C++ resource).

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