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When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

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Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#141

Post by pfortuny »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #42
ar_lan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans have proven time and time again that we are very good at optimizing for specific metrics, and apparently generally very poor at choosing the right metrics to target. School is a prime example, in my opinion - there is so much I "learned" in school that I'll never remember, because I didn't take a proper approach to learning - I just optimized for grades. I had a 4.7 GPA and could hardly tell you a thing about…

If we don't have metrics, how are we to fairly and objectively compare one worker's performance to another?

You are conflating justice with “objectivity”. They are not the same thing.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#142

Post by giantg2 »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #130
giantg2 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had a manager give me an FDN rating and when I asked what I can do to improve she told me "just keep doing what you're doing".

What's an FDN rating?

Further development needed, aka you're not successfully meeting expectations for your role.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#143

Post by fbanon9876 »

humanlion87 wrote: post #49
giantg2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm stupid. I give people the praise they deserve, even when it hurts me.

Same here. I am also stupid in another way - I can't boast of my "incredible" accomplishments by sending out huge and beautiful emails to prove my "impact". With that kind of combination, I am looking forward to stagnation at my current level.

I felt similarly, earlier in my career. Until a manager explained it this way: "Suppose you make the greatest thing in the world, but nobody knows about it. Wouldn't it be better to have spent 95% of the effort on making a slightly inferior product, and 5% to actually get people to use it? Isn't it more impactful to make something people use? Well, in order to get people to use anything, you have to talk about it."

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#144

Post by giantg2 »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #128
giantg2 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in my 30 with a family and find that I am much slower at learning new stacks now. I was a FileNet developer and then a Neoxam developer. There aren't many opportunities for me. I'm also just tired of the bullshit and and mind games that management plays. My current plan is to gamble in the stock market and 'retire' whenever I can't take it anymore or get fired. I would love to retire to run a small farm and/or wo…

Wanna go 50%/50% on a farm? We can be nerd neighbors.

Haha sure. I'll need to at least triple my money before I can even think about this as more than a dream.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#145

Post by xvector »

sleepydog wrote: post #131
Traster wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this culture is often the difference between a company that's in exponential growth mode - where you care more about velocity than costs. When a company becomes a stable giant, the engineering department is no longer necessarily creating value in the same way it was before and often slowly becomes bloated.

I agree, but in the specific case of Netflix, people are let go all the time , and managers have a lot of authority to make the decision to fire someone. Tenure doesn't matter, either -- you could work there for 6 years and end up getting fired when you get a new manager or the existing one decides you're phoning it in.

That's a massive amount of trust placed in managers. I've had asshole managers before that didn't have this much power thanks to company structure.

Honestly I would never work at a place like this. Maybe it's lean and efficient for the company, but it definitely doesn't sound fun for the employee.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#146

Post by thomasahle »

BurningFrog wrote: post #104
vidarh wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be extremely demoralising for co-workers in all kinds of roles when they see that kind of recognition being given to someone who they feel don't deserve it. Personally I think it's risky to acknowledge these kind of things in front of a team for that reason unless it's better quantified. I've personally as well been in situations where I've been outright resentful because the recognition of someone I knew was…

> It can be extremely demoralising for co-workers in all kinds of roles when they see that kind of recognition being given to someone who they feel don't deserve it. This is why wages are secret. Everyone is convinced they deserve to be in the top half of earners.

In Norway all wages are viewable on a public website https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40669239 It's pretty interesting.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#147

Post by driverdan »

giantg2 wrote: post #21
ping_pong wrote: post #17

This is the biggest problem with stack ranking software engineers, the practice I had to endure while at a well known software company. All it does is create a zero-sum game, so I have no incentive to compliment anyone else. I needed to make sure that my rank was as high as I could make it, which really sucked during performance time. It was very stressful, even though I was a high performer, because it didn't foster…

I'm stupid. I give people the praise they deserve, even when it hurts me.

If praising others hurts your position you should find a new employer.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#148

Post by jedberg »

sleepydog wrote: post #131
Traster wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this culture is often the difference between a company that's in exponential growth mode - where you care more about velocity than costs. When a company becomes a stable giant, the engineering department is no longer necessarily creating value in the same way it was before and often slowly becomes bloated.

I agree, but in the specific case of Netflix, people are let go all the time , and managers have a lot of authority to make the decision to fire someone. Tenure doesn't matter, either -- you could work there for 6 years and end up getting fired when you get a new manager or the existing one decides you're phoning it in.

I think the number of people that are let go is overexaggerated. But yes, it is easy to fire and hire. The two go hand in hand.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#149

Post by 29athrowaway »

ping_pong wrote: post #17

This is the biggest problem with stack ranking software engineers, the practice I had to endure while at a well known software company. All it does is create a zero-sum game, so I have no incentive to compliment anyone else. I needed to make sure that my rank was as high as I could make it, which really sucked during performance time. It was very stressful, even though I was a high performer, because it didn't foster…

Stack ranking intuitively makes sense. Rank people by performance, fire the bottom 10% or so, promote the top 10%.

The first iteration can work very well. But what about the next iterations? People will adapt to the process and change their behavior.

Under stacked ranking, if you are interviewing someone brilliant that can potentially be the strongest member on your team, is it in your best personal interest to hire that person?

The answer is: no. Because if you add high performance members to your team, with each iteration of stacked ranking not only it will be harder for you to be promoted, but you will be closer to being terminated.

So what ends up happening is that people hire the worst possible candidates, which defeats the purpose of stacked ranking. With stacked ranking, instead of iterating towards stronger people, you iterate towards mediocre, political people.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#150

Post by TheSoftwareGuy »

treis wrote: post #138
TheSoftwareGuy wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about this recently, what if we're doing it all wrong? what if, instead of your manager giving their reports a review, and then also giving raises based on that we go with a more market-based approach. Hear me out: Every year, and once a year, all the managers in the company submit bids to the employees that they want to work under them. Employees then select their favorite bid, and that becomes th…

There's a company that does this and more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20252759

Hah, I think I heard of that company on a podcast, it may have inspired the idea
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