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

gallup.com

101–110 of 170 posts

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

#101
The term "Glass Ceiling" was created to help discuss the difficulties for advancement by women and minority / upwardly mobile individuals in the workplace. I'd venture a guess HN is likely stratified to a predominately middle-aged or younger demographic (US), albeit with a significant number of professionals with decades of longevity with technology. So, not the primary target of the concept, but a group that definitely has grown up with the concept being discussed as a social/professional issue.

However, outside of technology fields, from personal experience and numerous discussions with peers (anecdotes), I think I finally hit the right term to describe a different 'advancement' conundrum: "The Grey Ceiling."

To put the idea in blunt terms, there's no room for advancement and career development when the prior generation(s) are stuck in the workforce for whatever reason(s) - lack of retirement savings, dependent adult children or being part of the 'Sandwhich Generation' or significant debt accumulated over the years.

The Grey Ceiling has no incentive to assist up and coming professionals to grow, to increase their income, or become peers in the corporate environment. The Gray Ceiling sees youth as a threat - insofar as if a younger worker gets a raise it's less monies available for themselves. The Gray Ceiling is not a 'guidebook' or 'conspiracy' to keep the younger professionals from advancing, but rather simply a result of self-interest amongst a cohort of people.

Of course there are dozens of firms that take on mentorship and development type programs. Like becoming an i-Banking Analyst. Of course there's light at the end of the 80 hour work week tunnel!

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

#102
post #4

I think employees want control of their own life, more share in decision-making. Essentially, they want democracy, even if they can't articulate it. But in capitalist society, where the ownership of capital decides, this cannot happen. There are attempts to tiptoe around this problem with holacracies and Agile methodologies and similar concepts, but the main problem still remains.

In theory workers co-operatives are this, but they have a habit of not doing so well in the real world. It is a really interesting question why this is the case. Why should a business owned by a capitalist for their own benefit be able to outcompete a workers co-operative?

Workers cooperatives have a lot of difficulty growing into a large organizations because they would have to be federated if they did (workers cooperatives as usually organized in the US rely on the bonds that can be formed by a small group of member-owners to function effectively). A franchise model can be effective for retail/service coops. Arizmendi/Cheeseboard in the Bay Area is one of the most successful, with 6 locations.

Workers' coops also have limited access to capital and business expertise which can make them difficult to get started, but the reason they don't grow large is the reason above.

However, it is totally fine for workers coops to remain small businesses for their entire existence, all that would mean for is that we need more of them to be started.

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

#103

I don't want my boss to look out for my development -- I want my boss to make sure that I have a clear political field to advance my technical agenda. Do that, and I'll take care of my personal development.

Those are one in the same. Development could be:

- clearing roadblocks - training and coaching - assigning work - forcing a change

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

#104
I don't disagree, who could.

But this type of stuff is usually nothing more than a justification for taking away the free lunch, without actually doing anything about making sure people have meaningful and fulfilling work. You know, we're getting serious by taking away the free Cheez-Its... and making your boss ride your ass to work 12 hour days.

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

#105
post #54

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.

It spreads too with things like http://www.strengthsfinder.com/ which are amazingly short-sighted. You mention you like solving some math-like problems and then surprise your strengths are analysis and math-related things!

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

#106
post #13

All I want is work organization that doesn't get in the way of doing things that actually make money. It's truly unbelievable how even small companies adopted systems that impede sales and engineering, or worse make customers jump through hoops, because it makes life easier for some bean counter. That other stuff sounds like completely optional nice-to-haves.

Having been through a similar knee-jerk of late, the important thing to remember (not that it helps) is that a publicly-traded company is a machine to make money. Not to make sales, not to make designs / widgets, but make money for the investors / owners. Once I wrapped my head around that it helped somewhat.

These aren't public companies and it's definitely costing owners money. But this isn't the point. The OP is about employees' satisfaction and inefficiencies like an inflexible invoicing, warehouse or order management system are incredibly frustrating and demotivating.

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

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've seen people proud of having an opportunity to maintain (note: not to develop, just to maintain) big products. Such product was doing amazing things and was well-written, of course, but would you think you could take pride of maintaining somebody else's work? Most developers wouldn't. There's a stigma against maintenance. Most developers want to be Software Architects! (Said with the pigs in space voice).

As someone who's been doing mostly maintenance recently, it's pretty clear why: 1) reading a pile of code and trying to figure out how it works and being constrained by someone else's solutions is considerably less fun for most developers than writing something new and making decisions about how the system will be put together 2) It's much harder to point to what you did or talk up your accomplishments. Particularly…

You forgot the bit where you often get blamed for the consequences of decisions you didn't take that are firmly cemented into extant code.

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

#108

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,…

I've worked for this company! Recently even. We also had those wonderful quarterly AND yearly reviews that don't accomplish anything other than give management a way to fire.

AKA performance review theater!

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

#109

This is a great opinion piece. Where's the sources for the data behind the rationale?

There isn't really any. This is the Chairman and CEO wanting to opine, probably to encourage sales[1]:

> What's more, companies should have all of their employees take the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment and make sure they build programs for each of those employees to get the most of their innate talents and strengths at work.

[1] From "Millions of Bad Managers Are Killing America's Growth" (linked to from the OP's article): http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/169208/millions-bad-m...

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

#110
post #4

I think employees want control of their own life, more share in decision-making. Essentially, they want democracy, even if they can't articulate it. But in capitalist society, where the ownership of capital decides, this cannot happen. There are attempts to tiptoe around this problem with holacracies and Agile methodologies and similar concepts, but the main problem still remains.

Actually, as an employee I want a strong vision with clear, achievable goals. It makes it easy to tell what I should be doing to be successful, and that is what lets me control my career. Interestingly enough, these properties are usually enhanced with smaller decision making groups, because values are less spread across the spectrum. If I have 50 decision makers, I have 50 different value functions to attempt to mee…

> I want a strong vision with clear, achievable goals

I cannot stress enough how awful the opposite of this is. Coming into work every day and wondering why any of this is going on as if we're in some WWI mindless-war hell, why we are even doing this in the first place after all of the legitimate and serious objections were flat out trashed, "process du jour" being a very real thing for extended periods of time.

... and all this at not a startup but at established top-tier companies.

Clear decisions, common direction, and stated intentions are wonderful.

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