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

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

#271

Post by jedberg » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #262

jedberg wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but how hard was it to hire new people? There is a direct correlation. It's super easy to hire people at Netflix. It is literally just up to the hiring manager. The flip side is that it is also easy to fire, so you can quickly correct any mistakes you may have made in hiring. This of course means more churn. But to someone working there, this felt like a good thing. It means you didn't have people just biding th…

Well, there can be some challenges to get people to apply to the archaic job board and they often don't recognize the brand. It's certainly easier to hire at Netflix being a well known consumer brand. How's the interview process though? Do managers get to hand pick candidates, without them being subjected to a grueling full day onsite with 6-8 employees? I'd say that's the biggest issue to hire. Even if referred and…

The process in general worked like this:

The candidate is found, either by the hiring manager themself, through an internal referral, or via the internal sourcers/recruiters (shout out to them for being amazing at their job!)

The hiring manager sets up an interview panel, where they recruit relevant stakeholders (in the case of an engineer, this was usually peer engineers and sometimes other managers who that team worked with a lot).

The panel is usually around four hours, with four or five people, including the manager, someone from HR, and some future peers.

If that goes well, then a second panel is set up for round two, also about four hours, which usually involves a Director or VP or two, maybe another higher up peer or sibling team peer or manager, and a higher up manager from HR.

Throughout the day, the hiring manager solicits feedback from the interviewers, usually within 15 minutes of them finishing.

The final decision rests solely with the hiring manager, but usually most of the feedback needed to be positive to move forward. The manager could also stop the process at any time. So if all the feedback was "meh", they could save everyone some time and cut it short.

Out of town candidates would have the both panels set for one long day, or sometimes the afternoon and following morning, so for out of town candidates who got all the way through, it could be pretty grueling.

After all that, if the hiring manager decides to hire you, you could get an offer before you even leave, or within a day or two usually, unless there were multiple people for one position, and then you had to wait for them all (although if you were amazing you'd get an offer anyway and then if someone else was good they would get an offer too).

For me personally, the entire process from first contact to signing offer papers was less than a week, and that was pretty typical at the time.

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

#272

Post by giantg2 » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #261

giantg2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to, but I find the lying and mind games to be morally offensive, especially when they can have such a large impact on a person's wellbeing.

How is communicating what you're working on lying or using mind games?

This comment was in response to "...it's better just to play their game...".

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

#273

Post by ZephyrBlu » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #272

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is communicating what you're working on lying or using mind games?

This comment was in response to "...it's better just to play their game...".

Yes, and the game is to promote your work and have it noticed.

You do that by communicating. Where is lying and mind games involved?

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

#274

Post by jedberg » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

quadrifoliate wrote: post #268

jedberg wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the ex-employee will never benefit either from supporting it. Like I said, even when you get fired, you still have stock options. So you do in fact benefit by helping the company when you're leaving. > The bond to co-workers at a former workplace is strange and tenuous - actually it goes the other way around, they reach out to you when they want to improve their situation. Let them ask you when they want out, t…

I'm sorry, but you're j"I worked at Reddit and Netflix"edberg. I am a schmoe who works in a small town where there are fewer than 10 good companies that I would want to work for, and you haven't heard of any of them. From the average perspective, I have found the parent's commenter's advice to be far more accurate. I don't think you have a good idea of how terrible and vindictive the average mid-level paper pusher in…

That is a completely fair and relevant assessment. I don't know what it is like to work in small town with few job prospects.

I would hope I would act the same in that situation, trying to make things better for everyone, but honestly I don't know.

Hopefully the rise of remote work will fix some of this, giving you more prospects outside of your small town, and more flexibility.

> So, in summary – hopefully this doesn't sound like flattery, but consider that you might be in the position of a Lakers player giving advice to a local pickup basketball group.

Aw man, thanks for that ego boost today. I'll try not to let it go to my head. :)

But seriously, I always try to give advice that is generally relevant, because I am self-aware enough to know that just about every situation I've been in is not the norm. But thank you for calling me out, because sometimes I still make poor assumptions.

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

#275

Post by giantg2 » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:04 PM UTC

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #273

giantg2 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment was in response to "...it's better just to play their game...".

Yes, and the game is to promote your work and have it noticed. You do that by communicating. Where is lying and mind games involved?

That might be the game at your company. The company I work for lies and plays mind games. I assume all large companies do - just look at other comments in this thread that suggest this.

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

#276

Post by ZephyrBlu » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #275

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and the game is to promote your work and have it noticed. You do that by communicating. Where is lying and mind games involved?

That might be the game at your company. The company I work for lies and plays mind games. I assume all large companies do - just look at other comments in this thread that suggest this.

Can you explain how the lies and mind games come into play at your company?

It seems like most other people are talking about gaming metrics, not lying and playing games.

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

#277

Post by user5994461 » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:12 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #271

user5994461 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there can be some challenges to get people to apply to the archaic job board and they often don't recognize the brand. It's certainly easier to hire at Netflix being a well known consumer brand. How's the interview process though? Do managers get to hand pick candidates, without them being subjected to a grueling full day onsite with 6-8 employees? I'd say that's the biggest issue to hire. Even if referred and…

The process in general worked like this: The candidate is found, either by the hiring manager themself, through an internal referral, or via the internal sourcers/recruiters (shout out to them for being amazing at their job!) The hiring manager sets up an interview panel, where they recruit relevant stakeholders (in the case of an engineer, this was usually peer engineers and sometimes other managers who that team wo…

Thanks for the description. Sounds like the typical very difficult full day interview as in every other big tech company, so it doesn't seem to me to be easy to hire or to be hired by any stretch.

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

#278

Post by solarengineer » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:19 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #245

iainmerrick wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The context being described is one in which you were just sacked at the whim of a manager. Doesn’t it seem a little funny to wait until the exit interview to ask if it came as a surprise? Maybe they’re going to act in that information somehow, perhaps sacking that manager if it’s part of a pattern of poor decisions, but they’re not planning on doing anything to help you personally, like overturning the dismissal. May…

> Doesn’t it seem a little funny to wait until the exit interview to ask if it came as a surprise? When else would they ask? The exit interview is when you are being informed of the decision. The process is you get a meeting invite for a 1 on 1 with your manager. They come in, tell you that you're getting let go and why, and then invite HR to come in. They then leave and HR goes over the paperwork and asks you about…

" I'm not sure when else they would ask"'

Perhaps have the manager give their decision making and their inputs in writing, have the employee review these and provide a response. After all, if the employee were good enough to have lasted six years under the scrutiny of other good peers, then a sudden firing needs investigation. That's how it is done at other places where people are valued.

This entire thread reminded me of the callous attitude toward firing shown in the movie "Margin Call". Is it all related to American culture that the rest of us don't understand?

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

#279

Post by jedberg » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:19 PM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #277

jedberg wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The process in general worked like this: The candidate is found, either by the hiring manager themself, through an internal referral, or via the internal sourcers/recruiters (shout out to them for being amazing at their job!) The hiring manager sets up an interview panel, where they recruit relevant stakeholders (in the case of an engineer, this was usually peer engineers and sometimes other managers who that team wo…

Thanks for the description. Sounds like the typical very difficult full day interview as in every other big tech company, so it doesn't seem to me to be easy to hire or to be hired by any stretch.

In some respects it is very similar, but I think the key differences were that the manager has complete discretion. Even if everyone said no, they could still hire you (as unwise as that might be). There was no hiring committee, no one had veto power.

But yes, you still had to pass a series of interviews. :)

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

#280

Post by khazhoux » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:32 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #166

The flip side of this is, if you want to sink someone's career, badmouth them to their manager. Having worked at many companies, I've observed how shockingly easy it is for a manager's assessment of their reports to be colored by "hearsay" whether good or bad. I once had several members of another team who deeply disgreed with a product decision I'd made complain to my manager that I was being uncooperative, not a te…

Also effectively (sadly): You can bad-mouth someone to your own manager, provided your manager is peers with your target.

I've been in too many performance-review manager meetings where someone under Manager A is up for promotion, and Manager B steps in and says "my engineer had a bad interaction with your engineer" and that's enough to put the promotion at serious risk. Managers are happy enough to effectively kill a promotion with a clean conscience by saying "let's re-evaluate this one in mid-cycle reviews". Sure, set this engineer back 6 months, a year, a year+, no worries all good.