When your coworker does great work, tell their manager • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by jedberg » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

HarryHirsch wrote: post #193

jedberg wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as bad as it sounds. Yes, it certainly happens and it sucks for the good person that it happens to. But managers like that don't last very long. When you get let go, they ask in the exit interview if you were warned, if your manager gave you any feedback leading up to it, etc. And then they follow up if the person says, "it was a total shock". I've definitely seen managers make some bad firing decisions, but…

When you get let go, they ask in the exit interview if you were warned Why would anyone give any kind of useful information in the exit interview? The only one who benefits is the company, they need to cover their back in case a suit over harassment comes up. If anyone wants revenge over poor management, keep silent, let the fellow continue to lose the company money and set them up for a lawsuit. HR is not on your si…

That's a very cynical view. While the company may not be on your side, helping your coworkers by proving feedback about bad management is a good thing.

Also, why would you want the company to fail? Just because they have one bad manager? My friends still work there, and if you have stock options, you even have a financial interest in the continued success of the company.

I see no downside in providing truthful feedback during an exit interview. Sure, it won't help you, but it helps everyone else that's still there.

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

#202

Post by jedberg » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

kingbirdy wrote: post #197

jedberg wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as bad as it sounds. Yes, it certainly happens and it sucks for the good person that it happens to. But managers like that don't last very long. When you get let go, they ask in the exit interview if you were warned, if your manager gave you any feedback leading up to it, etc. And then they follow up if the person says, "it was a total shock". I've definitely seen managers make some bad firing decisions, but…

That still sounds pretty bad. The person who fired you getting fired doesn't get you your job back.

No it doesn't, but do you think at other companies people don't get fired for bad reasons?

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

#203

Post by jedberg » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

normalnorm wrote: post #195

jedberg wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as bad as it sounds. Yes, it certainly happens and it sucks for the good person that it happens to. But managers like that don't last very long. When you get let go, they ask in the exit interview if you were warned, if your manager gave you any feedback leading up to it, etc. And then they follow up if the person says, "it was a total shock". I've definitely seen managers make some bad firing decisions, but…

> When you get let go I'm sorry for going a bit offtopic, but I have noticed this weird linguistic contortion "get let go" often. Why the euphemisms? You get fired. It doesn't hurt to speak plainly. This "let go" expression seems weirdly childish, like how people say that someone "passed on" to avoid confronting the hard reality of death. And I'm not picking on you, I know that almost everyone talks like this now.

Well at Netflix in particular, there is no real difference between being fired and being laid off, since both come with the same severance and benefits.

So it makes sense to use a generic term.

In most cases you use the generic term to avoid liability. Saying someone was fired could be libelous/slanderous.

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

#204

Post by jedberg » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 8:27 PM UTC

C1sc0cat wrote: post #183

sleepydog wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even a first line manager can fire? are there no hr processes

There is no HR process. In reality you've already had multiple discussions with HR and your manager if you're going to get fired, but it isn't required.

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

#205

Post by jedberg » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 8:30 PM UTC

johnm wrote: post #187

jedberg wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as bad as it sounds. Yes, it certainly happens and it sucks for the good person that it happens to. But managers like that don't last very long. When you get let go, they ask in the exit interview if you were warned, if your manager gave you any feedback leading up to it, etc. And then they follow up if the person says, "it was a total shock". I've definitely seen managers make some bad firing decisions, but…

Is there mobility so people can leave bad managers and move to other teams easily (i.e., vote with their feet) rather than being stuck under bad managers and getting screwed this way?

Yes, it's easy to change teams. You just find a new manager and ask if they have openings. You don't want to leave your old team high and dry, but the only requirement was the new manager saying yes.

Obviously in reality there were most likely some negotiations amongst the managers, as the new manager wouldn't want to get a reputation for stealing people.

But I saw people change teams pretty regularly. Not just because of bad managers, but because they just wanted a new challenge.

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

#206

Post by kingbirdy » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 8:31 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #202

kingbirdy wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still sounds pretty bad. The person who fired you getting fired doesn't get you your job back.

No it doesn't, but do you think at other companies people don't get fired for bad reasons?

Of course people get fired at other companies, but that's whataboutism - it's bad no matter where it happens.

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

#207

Post by jedberg » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 8:31 PM UTC

johnm wrote: post #185

jedberg wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as bad as it sounds. Yes, it certainly happens and it sucks for the good person that it happens to. But managers like that don't last very long. When you get let go, they ask in the exit interview if you were warned, if your manager gave you any feedback leading up to it, etc. And then they follow up if the person says, "it was a total shock". I've definitely seen managers make some bad firing decisions, but…

So then what was the behavior after the bad manager was let go? Did they actually reach out to those who were let go? The toxic effects of bad managers is way larger than ICs.

In some cases the fired people were invited back, but usually if they were good they already had another job.

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

#208

Post by thinnerlizzy » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 8:31 PM UTC

cookienapper wrote: post #181

giantg2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's me. I don't like visibility. I like to do a good job for the sake of the job without bragging.

The dilemma is this... "Ignorance is bliss" - You can't be worried/stressed about problems you don't know... What if you're consistently doing good work but have zero visibility? Then years down the road, you notice a trend of people around you getting promotions/raises/bounses more often than you? The same people that slack off & lack integrity; to name a few. As a human being with emotions... can you honestly say y…

I have this problem myself. I've gotten around it in the past by taking roles where the visibility is already baked into it, but I've never really solved the root problem. Now I'm a mostly anonymous, invisible contractor at a FAANG, and I don't know that there's a way break through that even for those most determined.

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

#209

Post by oblio » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #160

29athrowaway wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In my experience the biggest problem with stack ranking is that it's not easy to update. I mentored a developer and he skyrocketed from the bottom of the stack to near the top in real terms over the course of two years. But he could never escape his "reputation" as a lower tier person. He left, over two years quadrupled his income, and now I work for him. I doubled my income.

> He left, over two years quadrupled his income, and now I work for him. I doubled my income.

This is such an American story :-)

I don't think there's any other developed country where you can remain an individual contributor, a developer, and quadruple your income in 2 years. Heck, in most other developed countries the whole salary range for a profession is about 2x, from the lowliest junior developer to the highest senior developer. To make more you'd have to become a consultant, so basically start your own company, which is an entirely different kettle of fish.

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

#210

Post by Spooky23 » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 8:37 PM UTC

yreg wrote: post #70

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…

Planet Money had an episode on such metrics[0] The host shares a personal story from time when he was a cashier. The grocery chain measured performance as items scanned per minute and shared internal leaderboard. Some items are hard to scan so the cashiers ended up skipping scanning them – so the store gave them away for free. But the managers were happy about their KPIs. (Look how many items are we suddenly selling…

The supermarket I worked at in high school did this, but you usually didn’t get incentive pay if you worked less than 15 hours a week.

The supervisors were pretty swift and always looking for shrink. If you were letting dog food or whatever walk out the door, they would figure it out quickly and you would be gone.

The GMs were well paid and profitability and shrink were their metrics.