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

gallup.com

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

#51

Post by kabdib »

switch007 wrote: post #36

I company I worked at contracted a company to do "scientific" questionnaires of staff, so management knew which kind of personalities people had, what they wanted out of a job etc. We had to sit through an hour presentation, being told what makes us happy. Everyone was forced to do the questionnaire and afterwards we had an opportunity to discuss the results with the company and our managers. All through the process,…

Heh. Beats having the company hire a psychologist to talk to each staff member. They wanted to know why morale was so low.

I was polite and kept to topics involving work. I left about two months after that for a much better environment.

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

#52

Post by distracted828 »

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…

> failure teaches you which mistakes to avoid next time

As a recent grad who has been fired from two jobs, I would be afraid to join a poorly written project because I would worry that I would fail and then be fired.

Learning how to be successful is pretty important and teaches you things you cannot learn from lurching from failure to failure.

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

#53

Post by ioanarebeca »

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".

Well, I didn't use the original title because my belief is that it is misleading. Employee satisfaction does matter, but it depends how you define it - that was my take from the story. Imho quoting an actual fact resulting from their study was the objective solution compared to a debatable title meant to attract eyeballs.

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

#54

Post by feld »

officemonkey wrote: post #11

I'd believe Gallup if they weren't hacks and crooks. Five to ten years ago they had a big program that they peddled to organizations about Employee Engagement. They ended up paying the Justice Department 10.5 million dollars for crimes associated with contracting irregularities (aka bribes.) Looks like they're going to turn their "survey experience" to another part of employee training. It's really sad about Gallup.…

I worked for them for a short time due to an acquisition. They're crazy. They think they're solving the world's problems with polling data and they force you to be psycho-analyzed and have a plaque at your desk displaying your traits.

Nuttier than squirrel turds.

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

#55

Post by distracted828 »

js8 wrote: post #29
toyg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where the ownership of capital decides Well, "the ownership of capital", in a lot of public companies, is basically an absentee landlord. So it's not entirely about ownership, but rather about management. You can have cooperatives that are de-facto feudal/tyrannical structures, and private companies that are de-facto democracies.

I was talking about democracy with respect to employees. Even then, an important aspect of democracy is one person one vote (equality of access to power), which is untrue in public companies.

Having been part of a technical organization that was a democracy: no.

I'll take a monarchy over 5-hour meetings where nothing is decided and the room hates each other any day.

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

#56

Post by distracted828 »

quaffapint wrote: post #35

I want to write and learn good coding for myself. While the boss would be just as happy with crappy code as good code, as long as he sees that project percentage increase, it just makes me happier to do it right as much as possible, even if I spend my own time on it.

Here is something I don't understand: How does one effectively deliver on a project while writing crappy code? Doesn't trying to do that result in the codebase becoming so confusing that you don't know how to add things to it without breaking other things?

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

#57

Post by afterburner »

officemonkey wrote: post #11

I'd believe Gallup if they weren't hacks and crooks. Five to ten years ago they had a big program that they peddled to organizations about Employee Engagement. They ended up paying the Justice Department 10.5 million dollars for crimes associated with contracting irregularities (aka bribes.) Looks like they're going to turn their "survey experience" to another part of employee training. It's really sad about Gallup.…

Small correction, they predicted Romney would win in 2012, not McCain in 2008; they actually predicted Obama would do better than he did in 2008 (tied for the highest overestimated prediction). Their results have been poor indeed.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/which-po...

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/gallup-v...

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

#58

Post by VikingCoder »

kabdib wrote: post #51
switch007 wrote: post #36

I company I worked at contracted a company to do "scientific" questionnaires of staff, so management knew which kind of personalities people had, what they wanted out of a job etc. We had to sit through an hour presentation, being told what makes us happy. Everyone was forced to do the questionnaire and afterwards we had an opportunity to discuss the results with the company and our managers. All through the process,…

Heh. Beats having the company hire a psychologist to talk to each staff member. They wanted to know why morale was so low. I was polite and kept to topics involving work. I left about two months after that for a much better environment.

What would ya say ya do here?

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

#59

Post by jschwartzi »

distracted828 wrote: post #52
philipov wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> failure teaches you which mistakes to avoid next time As a recent grad who has been fired from two jobs, I would be afraid to join a poorly written project because I would worry that I would fail and then be fired. Learning how to be successful is pretty important and teaches you things you cannot learn from lurching from failure to failure.

Even the jobs with poorly-written codebases teach you a lot. Only they're teaching you through experience what is or isn't maintainable.

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

#60

Post by fweespeech »

switch007 wrote: post #36

I company I worked at contracted a company to do "scientific" questionnaires of staff, so management knew which kind of personalities people had, what they wanted out of a job etc. We had to sit through an hour presentation, being told what makes us happy. Everyone was forced to do the questionnaire and afterwards we had an opportunity to discuss the results with the company and our managers. All through the process,…

Honestly, it is because they don't want to help. They want the appearance of helping without the effort involved.

All I want is to work remotely permanently but they insist it isn't what i want and offer me more money.

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