11–20 of 82 posts
And that is when I stop reading any article.
EDIT: She's stating rules in the workplace make good employees leave and only mediocre employees remain. The term BS automatically applies here.
It takes a remarkable amount of trust for a random individual employee to feel confident that they can voice their concerns to management. And that trust takes an enormous amount of effort. If you're a manager and you're not absolutely sure that your employees would feel free to speak their minds, giving them a risk-free way of doing so isn't a bad idea. Employees feeling they can't speak honestly to someone who is in control of their livelihood isn't a "problem with communication", it's the status quo at the majority of companies.
> Faced with a rule-driven culture, the best employees ... are usually the first to go, because they’re in high demand and have more opportunity than most. What’s left is a pool of people who are mediocre at what they do ... And that is when I stop reading any article. EDIT: She's stating rules in the workplace make good employees leave and only mediocre employees remain. The term BS automatically applies here.
"Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go." This sentence is contradicts : "Let’s be honest: Performance reviews are a waste of time." How are you going to know if the person is productive if you are not doing performance reviews?
People know when you're not productive. Co-workers in particular but managers, too. When this is detected, I would rather tell a non-productive person this right away and not wait for any review. Perhaps then, after a few of these, an adjustment in salary or employment can be made.
"Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go." This sentence is contradicts : "Let’s be honest: Performance reviews are a waste of time." How are you going to know if the person is productive if you are not doing performance reviews?
You have to take an active role in managing them rather than just passively checking in occasionally.
Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go This is incredibly wasteful and an easy to way to lose good people. Take a few minutes to conduct a 'performance review' and see why they aren't producing. Sometimes it's an easy fix. I've seen companies fire people who where world class at Y simply because they weren't performing at X, despite the fact that the company also had a different department…
I have never seen a company implement a performance review:
- That mattered
- That would have detected anything
- That would be more than the obviousTrust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go This is incredibly wasteful and an easy to way to lose good people. Take a few minutes to conduct a 'performance review' and see why they aren't producing. Sometimes it's an easy fix. I've seen companies fire people who where world class at Y simply because they weren't performing at X, despite the fact that the company also had a different department…
Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go This is incredibly wasteful and an easy to way to lose good people. Take a few minutes to conduct a 'performance review' and see why they aren't producing. Sometimes it's an easy fix. I've seen companies fire people who where world class at Y simply because they weren't performing at X, despite the fact that the company also had a different department…
> Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go.
If you are firing someone for performance, you have done a performance review. It's just that it might be entirely in your head or based on office gossip about who appears most productive.
You wouldn't optimise a program without a profiler, so you shouldn't make hire/fire decisions on productivity without some means of measuring productivity. I know it's hard and tends to result in stupid metrics, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted.
I would add dress code to this list. "We have smart casual dress code in this software department. So you can't wear shorts event if its 40 degrees celsius. Oh and shirt is mandatory"
We had a chap who wore leather, except sometimes a T-Shirt expressing quite harshly an opinion about a globally recognised major religious figure from antiquity. I was glad to see a dress code come in.
Obviously I don't wear any of the graphic or gory ones, or from bands with obviously offensive names, and I will choose a nice polo shirt if I know I'm going to be having meetings people from other parts of the organization, especially if they're higher up in the hierarchy.
That said, the best head of development we ever had would wear leather pants, ass-kicking boots, rivet belts and band shirts, and he had a Mongol warrior-style beard and hairstyle. He also consistently got the very best reviews and the best results out of his teams.