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

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

#331

Post by watwut » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 7:32 AM UTC

wolco wrote: post #301

jedberg wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Netflix everyone gets an exit interview, no matter the reason for leaving.

How does it physically happen? Usually you are called into a meeting. Told your services are no longer required. Then you are given career resource support / paperwork with an offer and helped off the property. At what point is there a chance for an exit interview? After they first fire you, you are in shock.

In companies I worked for, people never left like that. They would be talked to and then continued going to work although significantly less motivated. The firing on spot must have big reason like not showing up or drinking.

American companies do that thing where they fire you, you have to leave instantly and then they pay you salary for the time you would be still going to work in any normal company.

The rest of team spends time guessing the situation, trying to contact you to figure out what happened and generally is disturbed.

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

#332

Post by sobani » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 7:51 AM UTC

brianpan wrote: post #314

jedberg wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I loved about working at Netflix. We didn't have performance reviews. It was assumed that your performance was good to excellent, otherwise you wouldn't be working there anymore. You had a constant feedback loop with your manager on performance, but nothing was ever formal. Raises were completely divorced from any performance assessment. You were paid whatever they thought the max was for your skillset,…

How is this not stack ranking by firing instead of by formal review?

With stack ranking a manager must rank the entire team from worst to best and fire / warn the lowest ranked person in the team. Imagine a team with the 10 best people you ever worked with. Now fire the least great of them. You must, because didn't you just say he/she is the worst of the team?

Instead the Netflix process sounds a lot more fair. If everyone is awesome, no one needs to be fired.

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

#333

Post by iamacyborg » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 7:56 AM UTC

sobani wrote: post #332

brianpan wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this not stack ranking by firing instead of by formal review?

With stack ranking a manager must rank the entire team from worst to best and fire / warn the lowest ranked person in the team. Imagine a team with the 10 best people you ever worked with. Now fire the least great of them. You must, because didn't you just say he/she is the worst of the team? Instead the Netflix process sounds a lot more fair. If everyone is awesome, no one needs to be fired.

I mean, they both sound like dystopian nightmare scenarios tbh.

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

#334

Post by rocqua » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:21 AM UTC

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?

What is better, an objective measurement of the wrong thing, or a subjective measurement of the right thing?

Which is more fair? Note that objective measurement of the wrong thing will reward people for stuff other than quality, and probably stuff beyond their control.

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

#335

Post by rocqua » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:30 AM UTC

jmchuster wrote: post #184

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…

I would also add that it's important to always be communicating with your manager and building that trust. You need to make sure that their initial reaction to any negative hearsay should be that the other party is then in fact bad and uninformed. Maybe it helps people to think of their manager/work as being analogous to a startup product? You build an awesome product, but then spend zero budget on sales and marketin…

Many people choose jobs over a startup to not have to do marketing

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

#336

Post by vehementi » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:48 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #267

maps7 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? or is this a personal theory?

Personal theory!

I hope you landed on it independently via gut without thinking it through much, because this is one of the boilerplate reasons companies use to trick people into thinking that they'd be better off not knowing everyone's salaries, when in reality companies just want to keep it secret to have more power over salary negotiation.

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

#337

Post by benhurmarcel » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:01 AM UTC

vlz wrote: post #330

giantg2 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the company's unofficial policy is that if someone gets a high rating on the team, then someone else must be given a low rating to balance that out, even if they don't deserve it.

> someone else must be given a low rating to balance that out, even if they don't deserve it I wonder how this kind of thinking starts. Is there any rationale for this?

In my company, employees grades have to follow a normal distribution (HR rule). Most people must be ranked average, some must be ranked above, some must be ranked below. Otherwise all managers would give above average grades to most people, because it makes them look better, avoid conflict, and everyone is always convinced they're above average. So HR forces managers to find some losers.

If a coworker is given an above average grade, it means I'm much less likely to get one.

But in practice it doesn't matter too much because managers tend to distribute grades depending on time since last promotion/significant raise, to be able to justify the next one.

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

#338

Post by normalnorm » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 10:11 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #249

normalnorm wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting point, but in most cases people say it when talking about themselves (I was let go) or in the hypothetical, as was the case here with OP: "When you get let go". So no risk of liability, there must be some other explanation.

There is still a liability when talking about oneself. Sometimes when someone is fired they have to sign a non-disparagement agreement to get their severance. Saying you were fired could be considered disparaging.

> Saying you were fired could be considered disparaging.

I'm sorry, but I highly doubt that this is the case.

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

#339

Post by vidarh » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 10:17 AM UTC

thomasahle wrote: post #146

BurningFrog wrote: post #104

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. 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.

Well, sort of. Taxable income is, but since Norway allows e.g debt interest payments for mortgages etc. to be offset against mortgage, taxable income can vary quite a bit even for people with the same exact income.

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

#340

Post by brabel » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 10:53 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #207

johnm wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That supposes that good people get good jobs easily. Given the stupidity of the interview system and my own experience trying to get a better job after working my ass off on improving myself, I think this is really not guaranteed to be the case.