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At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

bloomberg.com

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Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#151

Post by andreilys »

Aunche wrote: post #144
holidayacct wrote: post #76

Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred mil…

> Employees always figure out how to abuse productivity metrics. Targets aren't the same things as measures. Measures of productivity are easy, but targets are not. For example, for a sufficiently large group of people (e.g. all young developers at JP Morgan), you can measure their productivity with how many lines of code they write on average. As long as you aren't using lines of code for performance evaluation, the…

Lines of code on average is a terrible measure of productivity.

I’ve solved problems with 6 lines of code that took me a week to think of. Other days I write 600 lines of code.

I would argue that the former 6 lines I wrote is much more productive than the 600 lines.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#152

Post by Mountain_Skies »

I've enjoyed working from home for the past four years but have serious reservations about how well it would have worked for me at the beginning of my career. Though I came into the labor market with a good degree from a good school, there was so much to learn and much of that happened informally and organically while in the physical presence of others with more experience. Perhaps the nature or structure of work will adapt in such a way that those early in their careers will not be hampered by being remote but in the meantime it does seem like there is going to be a need for extra patience in developing younger employees into higher levels of productivity.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#153

Post by fyz »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #139
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem I want to start off by saying that I don't completely disagree with you, but all of us should take a step back and realize how an absurd of a position this is for us to be in a society. This immeasurability is inversely proportional to the tangible, real value created. You can, for example, absolutely measure to the dollar the producti…

> You can, for example, absolutely measure to the dollar the productivity of a plumber and you can easily compare two different plumbers I'm curious about this idea. What if plumber A shows up, quickly fixes something using existing, on-site materials, and ends up charging much less (no parts + 'quick' labor), and then the plumbing breaks again in X months. What if plumber B shows up, takes more time and replaces a p…

Productivity in this case is fairly simple to calculate = Cost/Duration.

You can factor in the time (presumably that’s paid for so you should have a real number) and cost of materials (On-site use historical or replacement cost) yourself.

Your points holds more generally though, especially when there aren’t clear prices paid.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#154

Post by 37ruudueuej »

yhoneycomb wrote: post #89
holidayacct wrote: post #76

Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred mil…

> Employees always figure out how to abuse productivity metrics. If people can abuse your productivity metric, then it's a bad measure of productivity - not a fault of the worker.

Strongly disagree, by definition it's the abuse that compromises the metric not the abusability. The distinction is important because it means that with a large and rapid enough rotation of obfuscated targets you can find out what you need while mitigating the bulk of intentional metric abuse.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#155

Post by andreilys »

bsder wrote: post #125
holidayacct wrote: post #76

Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred mil…

> Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. I totally disagree. That's the whole point of your manager and reviews. In addition, JPMorgan isn't just programmers. It's a lot of people who talk to people and process paper--a LOT of paper. And they can quite clearly measure how much paper is being processed per person. > Employees always figure out how to abuse productivity metric…

The review process is a complete sham. If you honestly believe it’s a measure of your productivity and not a post-hoc rationalization based on a restricted promo and bonus pool I have a bridge to sell you.

Most managers will think an employee who spends 10 hours working and 30 hours schmoozing/promoting their work is more productive than someone who spends 60 hours grinding the tasks given to them.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#156

Post by jimmytucson »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #139
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem I want to start off by saying that I don't completely disagree with you, but all of us should take a step back and realize how an absurd of a position this is for us to be in a society. This immeasurability is inversely proportional to the tangible, real value created. You can, for example, absolutely measure to the dollar the producti…

> You can, for example, absolutely measure to the dollar the productivity of a plumber and you can easily compare two different plumbers I'm curious about this idea. What if plumber A shows up, quickly fixes something using existing, on-site materials, and ends up charging much less (no parts + 'quick' labor), and then the plumbing breaks again in X months. What if plumber B shows up, takes more time and replaces a p…

Doesn’t happen to the same degree as in software. With plumbing or painting, yes there are good jobs and bad jobs, but if the water gets to where it’s going and there’s no moisture, you’re pretty much done. If the paint is on the wall and not on the ceiling or the trim, and you can’t see roller marks, it’s a good job. With software, there seem to be endless layers of nuance between good or bad, finished or unfinished.

Also, it should take X hours to paint a room of Y size with this many windows or doors. There are clearly established timelines for a job and any big deviation from that will get you fired (or not hired again by the same builder). There’s no “due to this manager’s lack of experience with agile, a project that should have taken 2 weeks took 4 and a half months, and the test coverage is poor”.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#157

Post by Aunche »

andreilys wrote: post #151
Aunche wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Employees always figure out how to abuse productivity metrics. Targets aren't the same things as measures. Measures of productivity are easy, but targets are not. For example, for a sufficiently large group of people (e.g. all young developers at JP Morgan), you can measure their productivity with how many lines of code they write on average. As long as you aren't using lines of code for performance evaluation, the…

Lines of code on average is a terrible measure of productivity. I’ve solved problems with 6 lines of code that took me a week to think of. Other days I write 600 lines of code. I would argue that the former 6 lines I wrote is much more productive than the 600 lines.

For an individual, lines of code is a bad measure. Some problems are harder than other and some people do more design or leadership work. However, for the collective this all should average out.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#158

Post by refurb »

jdavis703 wrote: post #142
kortilla wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in a world collapsing around me with no short or long term future. This is just your world-view being shaped by your “news” sources. Maybe get off of social media for a while or only follow people who do not talk about politics/current events. > but if I was working in finance? No way. People who say this tend to underestimate the importance of finance. For example, enabling easy mobile banking for tech illiterate…

I had a friend die from CV-19. A parent got infected. My home has been basically the center of racial justice protests: we’ve had fires set outside our door, tear gas wafting in to our windows, etc. Even when there’s not a protest, the entire neighborhood is covered in protest-inspired murals that serve as a daily reminder that my life (as a Black person) doesn’t matter right now. And these past few weeks we’ve been…

Even with all those things happening, I'm not sure I'd say we're "in a world collapsing around me with no short or long term future."

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#159

Post by andreilys »

rubidium wrote: post #103
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> onboarding a new college grad has got to be challenging when there's not a group of experienced team members around them to be able to see when they're struggling or headed off the wrong path without realizing it Has anyone figured this one out? It’s inhibiting hiring quite significantly at our firm. I can’t imagine we’re the only ones.

For fresh grads: x2 Manager checkins daily for first 2 months For the 2-5 yr expirence: x1 checkin daily for the first month For the 5+ yr experience engineer: x1 checkin daily first week. For all: reduce checkins as appropriate for each, case-by-case.

2x Daily Checkin’s for 2 months.... sounds like a recipe for micro management.

Also given most managers schedules are packed, I’m not sure how feasible this advice is. Especially if they onboard 2 or 3 new hires.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#160

Post by andreilys »

wsatb wrote: post #118
kortilla wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in a world collapsing around me with no short or long term future. This is just your world-view being shaped by your “news” sources. Maybe get off of social media for a while or only follow people who do not talk about politics/current events. > but if I was working in finance? No way. People who say this tend to underestimate the importance of finance. For example, enabling easy mobile banking for tech illiterate…

> This is just your world-view being shaped by your “news” sources. Maybe get off of social media for a while or only follow people who do not talk about politics/current events. This is a good way to escape reality, but not much more. I've done this plenty of times, but the world doesn't stop moving because you're ignoring what's going on. You become ignorant, and that is far worse. > Don’t shit on fields you don’t…

> “ This is a good way to escape reality, but not much more. I've done this plenty of times, but the world doesn't stop moving because you're ignoring what's going on. You become ignorant, and that is far worse.”

The news cycle tends to focus on all the things going wrong in the world. Rarely will you hear positive or uplifting stories. After all, if it bleeds it leads.

I fail to see how opting out of the constant spew of toxic negativity by the media will result in you being ignorant. Who knows, it might even give you time to pick up a history book and give you some perspective on the current moment

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