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Employees: looking for “the great boss who cares about their development”

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Re: Employees: looking for “the great boss who cares about their development”

#41

Post by ricksplat »

rbanffy wrote: post #37

I think there may be some confusion between satisfaction through perks with satisfaction through doing great work. I require certain perks - sufficient time off with my family, time to educate myself further, a reasonably stocked cafeteria, quiet spaces - but I also need to feel satisfied by knowing the work I do is important - and what is "important" to me may not be important to anyone else and what is important to…

> satisfaction through doing great work

The org psych term for this is "engagement".

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_engagement
Operationally "satisfaction" is an all encompassing term, that doesn't really relate to specific factors. So while you might be "satisfied" with your bank manager, you may not want to marry her.

Engagement speaks of something more: A satisfaction (if you will) derived specifically from doing your work.

As an interesting aside, engagement is theoretically the other side of the coin of "burnout" and is physiologically thought to operate on the same mechanisms as "stress" (or "eustress" to distinguish it positively).

A "satisfied" state relates more to a relaxed, unstressed, disengaged mentality.

Favourite example from one of my textbooks was a lion chasing a gazelle: Both are physiologically experiencing the same thing, but the gazelle is "stressed" whereas the lion is "engaged".

Re: Employees: looking for “the great boss who cares about their development”

#43

Post by ricksplat »

ricksplat wrote: post #41
rbanffy wrote: post #37

I think there may be some confusion between satisfaction through perks with satisfaction through doing great work. I require certain perks - sufficient time off with my family, time to educate myself further, a reasonably stocked cafeteria, quiet spaces - but I also need to feel satisfied by knowing the work I do is important - and what is "important" to me may not be important to anyone else and what is important to…

> satisfaction through doing great work The org psych term for this is "engagement". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_engagement Operationally "satisfaction" is an all encompassing term, that doesn't really relate to specific factors. So while you might be "satisfied" with your bank manager, you may not want to marry her. Engagement speaks of something more: A satisfaction (if you will) derived specifically fro…

Actually you could in fact take this a step further into behavioral theory, if you consider workplace satisfaction derived from doing work versus other sources (football tables etc). It could be said that too much satisfaction from the "other" sources "extinguishes" (or overrides) the satisfaction derived from doing the work.

Kind of like that classic experiment of the rat who is given a regular dosage of cocaine and soon starts to neglect any other activities beyond the consumption of cocaine.

Re: Employees: looking for “the great boss who cares about their development”

#44

Post by philipov »

dozzie wrote: post #32
vfc1 wrote: post #27

This is great stuff. Problem is there is the work the company needs you to do, and the work you want to do. Both of these change overtime, for example in software development when the lifecycle of the project advances. As the project reaches maintenance mode, you can no longer design the architecture and implement things from scratch, its already done. So the work the company needs you to do now is very different. Th…

> So the work you want to do and the one the company wants you to do will probably only overlap for a short period of time. Similarly, there's only short period of overlapping of the work you want to do and the work doing which you would grow. I see too often programmers jumping around abandoning their half-written application or library once it is somewhat working, never learning what semantic versioning is about, w…

I can easily imagine taking pride in maintaining a well-written project doing amazing things. I believe most people unhappy with maintaining someone else's work are dealing with neither, and are furthermore discouraged from doing anything to make it better. Just complete the tickets as quickly as possible, and keep your head low.

Re: Employees: looking for “the great boss who cares about their development”

#45

Post by dozzie »

philipov wrote: post #44
dozzie wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the work you want to do and the one the company wants you to do will probably only overlap for a short period of time. Similarly, there's only short period of overlapping of the work you want to do and the work doing which you would grow. I see too often programmers jumping around abandoning their half-written application or library once it is somewhat working, never learning what semantic versioning is about, w…

I can easily imagine taking pride in maintaining a well-written project doing amazing things . I believe most people unhappy with maintaining someone else's work are dealing with neither, and are furthermore discouraged from doing anything to make it better. Just complete the tickets as quickly as possible, and keep your head low.

Yes, but you wouldn't know in advance that this codebase you're going to be assigned to is well-written, or that it does amazing things (unless you're in its target users group or know the target industry already).

If somebody offered you a job to merely maintain an old, gigantic codebase, I don't think your first thought would be "wow, I'm going to learn so much from this!", and there probably wouldn't be any way you could assess the codebase quality before accepting the offer so you could end up thinking that eventually. This is how things that you want and that could help you grow can be vastly different.

Re: Employees: looking for “the great boss who cares about their development”

#46

Post by philipov »

dozzie wrote: post #45
philipov wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can easily imagine taking pride in maintaining a well-written project doing amazing things . I believe most people unhappy with maintaining someone else's work are dealing with neither, and are furthermore discouraged from doing anything to make it better. Just complete the tickets as quickly as possible, and keep your head low.

Yes, but you wouldn't know in advance that this codebase you're going to be assigned to is well-written, or that it does amazing things (unless you're in its target users group or know the target industry already). If somebody offered you a job to merely maintain an old, gigantic codebase, I don't think your first thought would be "wow, I'm going to learn so much from this!", and there probably wouldn't be any way yo…

I mean, if you're a novice, it should be your first thought. If it isn't, I consider that a failure of education. Jumping into writing something from scratch when you're not part of the target user group or know the target industry already is a great way to produce horrible code that you (or someone else) will hate to maintain.

This is why it's so important to grill your interviewers about the reality of working at the company, although I'll admit that I learned which questions to ask from bad experience. Asking those questions also happens to serve as excellent signalling to your technical interviewers, much more effective than being able to solve some silly logic puzzle.

And to be perfectly fair, you do learn so much from working on poorly written projects that are a horror to maintain. Failure teaches you which mistakes to avoid next time.

Re: Employees: looking for “the great boss who cares about their development”

#47

Post by TheAndruu »

I agree with the point, and appreciate the article stating in words what I've felt.

If a recruiter tries to push the 'game room and free snacks' angle, I immediately grow concerned that the employer is out of touch with employees and thinks that this leads to happiness.

Everyone really wants to feel their work is appreciated.

Re: Employees: looking for “the great boss who cares about their development”

#48

Post by hepta »

metasean wrote: post #39

... please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait. - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The original title is, "Employee Satisfaction Doesn't Matter".

IMO the original title is linkbait, even if not intended as such. Once you define "satisfaction" it makes more sense.

Re: Employees: looking for “the great boss who cares about their development”

#49

Post by maxxxxx »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #15

This article is wrong. Why is it wrong? It talks about fulfilling work and a great boss as if it's the ONLY thing that employees look for. BY common sense what employees look for is a huge multitude of factors combined together part of which includes "Free lunches, more vacation time, latte machines --- and don't forget a ping pong table." It is stupid to discard all of these things as inconsequential when the employ…

I think plenty of people are content with a secure job with OK pay, interesting work, enough vacation and be treated as adults with respect. They don't want ultimate satisfaction. That goal is very attainable.

I have never heard people demanding a ping pong table.

Re: Employees: looking for “the great boss who cares about their development”

#50

Post by jetcata »

philipov wrote: post #46
dozzie wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you wouldn't know in advance that this codebase you're going to be assigned to is well-written, or that it does amazing things (unless you're in its target users group or know the target industry already). If somebody offered you a job to merely maintain an old, gigantic codebase, I don't think your first thought would be "wow, I'm going to learn so much from this!", and there probably wouldn't be any way yo…

I mean, if you're a novice, it should be your first thought. If it isn't, I consider that a failure of education. Jumping into writing something from scratch when you're not part of the target user group or know the target industry already is a great way to produce horrible code that you (or someone else) will hate to maintain. This is why it's so important to grill your interviewers about the reality of working at t…

I'd love to hear which questions you ask in interviews to get this information out of the interviewers!
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