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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”

#151

Post by collyw »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #80
collyw wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get that idea from? (There is more evidence for people evolving rather than being designed).

Designed by natural selection. People are naturally selected to never stay happy for long. To be satisfied and satiated means you no longer feel the drive to compete. There is no evolutionary advantage in a creature that does not want to compete.

"Design by natural selection"

otherwise known as evolution. Design implies some kind of thought process before creation.

There are plenty of counterintuitive examples of traits that have been selected by evolution. Dogs seems happy all the time and they have not been made extinct yet.

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

#152

Post by __derek__ »

praneshp wrote: post #118
busterarm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Now I think I work here. $BIG_CORP_FEMALE_CEO_UNDER_FIRE?

This describes many large companies.

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

#153

Post by abawany »

mbrock wrote: post #5

On the other hand, I don't want to be condescended to by managers that invite me to meetings about improving me , assessing my personality, helping me "grow." I want to help improve the product , and the most fundamental way to engage me with that is to ask me for input and take my ideas & concerns seriously. Just coffee and a chat every now and then is a great setting for that. No need for made-up agendas and bullet…

Not to mention that aforesaid quizzes, often based on faulty "science", can brand one in a manner that may not be advantageous to one's future. A previous employer in the early 2000s got the MBTI religion and everyone had to be evaluated. Fortunately, they gave people a chance to opt out of sharing their results, which I gladly took. The idea of someone dismissing my opinion because I might be too "judge-y" or "feely" raised my hackles.

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

#154

Post by crimsonalucard »

collyw wrote: post #151
crimsonalucard wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Designed by natural selection. People are naturally selected to never stay happy for long. To be satisfied and satiated means you no longer feel the drive to compete. There is no evolutionary advantage in a creature that does not want to compete.

"Design by natural selection" otherwise known as evolution. Design implies some kind of thought process before creation. There are plenty of counterintuitive examples of traits that have been selected by evolution. Dogs seems happy all the time and they have not been made extinct yet.

>otherwise known as evolution. Design implies some kind of thought process before creation.

I apologize profusely for offending you with the word "Design." I accidentally implied the existence of a god which is a totally off-topic conversation and therefore must commit seppuku.

>There are plenty of counterintuitive examples of traits that have been selected by evolution. Dogs seems happy all the time and they have not been made extinct yet.

Sure, but for the specific case of humanity it is highly likely that the reason we do not stay happy is due to natural selection.

Dogs are a domestic animal and therefore a product of artificial selection. We as benevolent caretakers have have selected the dogs that are happy all the time and euthanized the dogs that are angry all the time. The evolutionary strategy dogs employ is a parasitic strategy and less common than the standard strategy most competitive animals follow. Dogs hijack our paternal and maternal instincts and cause us to give them resources, this caused them to evolve non-standard traits that make them happy all the time and unable to survive in the wild. The evolutionary strategy humans follow is more standard and thus we display more malevolent and competitive traits.

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

#155

Post by taneq »

jdmichal wrote: post #71
taneq wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the third hand, if you have some kind of career goals, then you probably want to be making some kind of progress towards them. While it's not always possible to discuss such goals with your employer (eg. if your goal is "become the CTO" and your immediate manager's goal is also "become the CTO" then discussing this with them is likely to end poorly), it's important to at least let them know which direction you wan…

> At my last job, I was the primary fire-putter-outer on a number of fronts, and it was very disheartening watching new projects (that I'd put my hand up for) get handed off to others while I was busy fixing up the previous efforts of said others. I've seen this happen at an even bigger scale. The site I was part of was very successful, and was therefore completely unable to get any time or capital to do independent…

I feel your pain. :( It's the Dilbert Principle in action, except that rather than less effective people/groups being deliberately selected for advancement, those groups are selected by default because they're sitting around doing nothing important. The most effective people/groups are too busy getting the critical work done to risk letting them change roles.

If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.

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

#156

Post by officemonkey »

27182818284 wrote: post #105
feld wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Yes. It was "Strengths finder," which was almost as mumbo-jumbo as Myers-Briggs.

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

#158

Post by mbrock »

jevanish wrote: post #145
taneq wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the third hand, if you have some kind of career goals, then you probably want to be making some kind of progress towards them. While it's not always possible to discuss such goals with your employer (eg. if your goal is "become the CTO" and your immediate manager's goal is also "become the CTO" then discussing this with them is likely to end poorly), it's important to at least let them know which direction you wan…

The underlying problem for you and mbrock is that managers are rarely rewarded for doing these things. Mbrock is essentially asking for a one on one that isn't filled with Status Updates and platitudes. One that fosters genuine conversation and values their input. You're talking about real growth and whether it's a specific title or new skills, that's also a huge motivator. Unfortunately, in most companies, managers…

At my first job, the only one-on-one I ever had with my manager was a yearly scheduled "performance review" (in Swedish, the word used is the same as that used in grade school), during which we assessed my competence.

When a higher level manager wanted to know why the product development wasn't as good as it could be, an external consultant came in to observe for a couple of weeks. He actually did talk one-on-one with each employee. He asked me what I thought really needed to be done, in a genuine way.

He produced some kind of report. We asked for several months to see the report, but it never surfaced. Then I left to join a small startup...

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

#159

Post by ArkyBeagle »

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.

Maintenance isn't that significantly different from development from scratch. The differences are only in how it's paid for and how you evaluate risks.

Development from scratch means much more ... "sales" overhead. Meetings and (ultimately) disposable documentation.

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

#160

Post by childpsychismeh »

jevanish wrote: post #144
ryandrake wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most" of us? Maybe if most of us are execs and senior VPs. For the rest of us $10K is a big chunk of change--a significant percentage of compensation. $10K is about $500/mo after taxes, which could, for example, mean being able to afford to live in a much better neighborhood or send your kids to a better school.

There's a lot of studies that show that money is a poor motivator long term once you pass the essentials for life (which admittedly in the Valley is higher than many other places). As important, some of those studies show that especially in roles requiring creativity (like engineering, design, etc) it actually negatively effects motivation and output. See Dan Pink's Drive for a good summary of many of this research,…

This response has always seemed meaningless to the point of insult; and the conspiracy theorist in me wonders how much of "they don't REALLY want/need money" is motivated by the people who have to pay out.

(sorry, this comes off as very blunt, please take it as only a comment on the argument and not you, but I needed to use strong words to express the strength of what it makes me feel)

As you say, "essentials for life" are different in the valley, but are also different per-person. My essentials were MUCH simpler when I was living alone. When I got a fiancee in industry, my essentials became easier to support Now that she went into academia, it suddenly became a struggle.

Combine this with area of living, and what do you see? That the "essentials" are far more dynamic than your argument typically lets on, not only in terms of material differences like spousal compensation/how many children you're supporting, but psychological/learned response, e.g. "I have to get my used car repaired every year or so because I can't afford a new one off the lot".

Is that essential? Different people could probably make different arguments. Does it hurt when you have that thought pulling in next to someone driving a Porsche? You better damn well bet it does.

So to bring this back to the root: VERY LONG TERM maybe I could agree with you, but life isn't just a very long term calculation, the dominating thoughts day to day are (at least for the less zen of us) very now-focused, and expose many situations in which a little more money (as a parent comment said) would drastically increase the quality of life.

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