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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”

#81

Post by vonmoltke »

vinceguidry wrote: post #17
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…

Not all jobs can offer growth. It's in everybody's best interests if you just move on from such jobs once you outgrow them. I spent two and a half years at my current job maintaining a legacy codebase. I looked for, and explored, growth opportunities at that job. In the end, I had to find them myself. Nobody at the company could really put in the effort it would have taken to keep me fulfilled, so I did it myself. I…

> I firmly believe that anybody can grow at any job.

You've obviously never worked on a large DOD program.

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

#83

Post by ryandrake »

fweespeech wrote: post #60
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.

Wow. In the companies I've worked for, "more money" seems to be the only motivator they couldn't seem to come up with. Mind switching jobs?

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

#84

Post by scarmig »

distracted828 wrote: post #56
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?

You write crappy code to meet unrealistic deadlines, you get promoted, hand off shitty code to someone else who is viewed as a low performer because they were too busy writing good code.

It's not actually that clear cut (it's more like an average performers who write shitty code quickly will be rewarded over an average performer writing solid code less quickly), but code quality isn't legible to management and HR, who control resource allocation. Even a line manager knowledgeable about the code base has incentives to lead a team that produces shitty code now instead of good code later.

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

#85

Post by crimsonalucard »

maxxxxx wrote: post #49
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.

People who haven't attained "ultimate satisfaction" aren't ultimately satisfied. Who is someone that isn't ultimately satisfied?: A person that is ultimately unsatisfied. Thus you are referring to people who are unsatisfied, ultimately speaking.

I agree, to be unsatisfied is a goal that is very attainable. Many people stay in certain job roles because they made a compromise: job security over satisfaction.

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

#86

Post by jahaja »

distracted828 wrote: post #55
js8 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you believe a dysfunctional, albeit democratic, company is the goal?

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

#87

Post by vinceguidry »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #78
vinceguidry wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The company needs to provide better benefits, continuously, or the employee leaves. This smacks of entitlement. The employee won't necessarily leave, there are many reasons why they wouldn't. There's a whole world of jobs out there that aren't tech, these fields don't have the luxury of an expanding industry propping up salaries, providing a social ladder. Even in tech, I don't see anything wrong with the decision…

>This smacks of entitlement. Employees should feel entitled. They generate 99% of our GDP while 50% of that GDP goes to the top 1% of the population. The capitalist employer / employee relationship is designed to screw over the employee. The word "entitlement" is a classic guilt tripping technique used by either employee or employer. Ignore it, because as an employee you will never get a high enough salary that can t…

You know what keeps real employees satisfied at their jobs, not just the entitled ones that expect the good life to just come to them?

A sense of purpose. The feeling that what you do matters. The feeling that at the end of the day, you've accomplished something. Something worth giving 1/3 of your life towards.

You're hiding your greed behind classist nonsense. You don't want a sense of purpose, you just want that paycheck to keep getting bigger. You are very probably already in the 1% of top income earners in the world. Being that that cutoff is $34,000/year, it's not hard.

You should be focused less on fighting those with more than you, and more on working with them to do things that matter.

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

#88

Post by vinceguidry »

vonmoltke wrote: post #81
vinceguidry wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all jobs can offer growth. It's in everybody's best interests if you just move on from such jobs once you outgrow them. I spent two and a half years at my current job maintaining a legacy codebase. I looked for, and explored, growth opportunities at that job. In the end, I had to find them myself. Nobody at the company could really put in the effort it would have taken to keep me fulfilled, so I did it myself. I…

> I firmly believe that anybody can grow at any job. You've obviously never worked on a large DOD program.

Well, I was in the Air Force, does that count?

Learned a lot there. Not so much about technical topics, but about how to deal with bureaucracies.

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

#90

Post by ryandrake »

Funny thing missing from this thread: Money. Doesn't anyone work for money anymore? You know, that stuff that allows you to survive day to day? I guess it just sounds better to say that you go to work to "change the world" or "fulfill a lifelong passion" or "grow your career". Saying you're in it for money is crass. If I want personal fulfillment or engaging projects or ping pong, I can do that outside of work, AND I get to pick and choose what I want to do. Would you really do what you do for 1/3 of your life if you didn't receive compensation for that time?
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