Dumb Rules That Make Your Best People Want to Quit (2017)

81–82 of 82 posts

Re: Dumb Rules That Make Your Best People Want to Quit (2017)

#81

Post by philpem » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 2:38 PM UTC

lllr_finger wrote: post #49

sureaboutthis wrote: post #11

> 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.

I think she was close to figuring out what can happen, but missed the mark. Great developers leaving are your canaries, and the Dead Sea Effect is a real thing. So what do rules and processes have to do with this? I'm currently happiest at my job that is the most "enterprisey" and has more rules. I can't wear shorts or sandals to work, which perpetually irritates me. I can't run the OS I want at work, and I have a ha…

This is the first time I've heard of the Dead Sea Effect, I just had to look it up. Thanks for the informative post, it explains a lot about "churn" in a few organisations I've worked for in the past.

Re: Dumb Rules That Make Your Best People Want to Quit (2017)

#82

Post by philpem » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 2:41 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #51

Tor3 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, why? I've seen exactly that. Stupid rules coming up, extremely performing employees leaving or making it clear that unless that's revoked they'll leave.

My favourite example of this was when one company tried to issue all the devs with new contracts with the "standard" IP clauses claiming ownership of everything we did. Since there were a number of Free Software devs on the team, this was unacceptable ... so, while asking for clarification and a change, we simply didn't sign the new contracts. There was no way the company could have taken action against us without co…

These are usually the first clauses I query ;)

This works pretty well as a response:

"Okay so I maintain some open-source stuff, it's all on Github. I appreciate you want to maintain your IP, and I agree to give you first-refusal on anything new before I make it public, and stay out of any market where the company has an interest."

This is usually enough to swing things from "we own everything" to "we own everything you make on work time, unless it intersects with one of our products".

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