Maybe if they offered desk, stand+keyboard+mouse/desktop so people don't have to work from the "kitchen table" the results would be better?
At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home
171–180 of 271 posts
Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Doesn’t happen to the same degree as in plumbing. With front end or back end, yes there are good jobs and bad jobs, but if the data gets to where it’s going and there’s no bit rot, you’re pretty much done. If the data is in the db and not on the paper forms, and you can’t see it decrypted at rest, it’s a good job. With plumbing, there seem to be endless layers of nuance between good or bad, finished or unfinished. Al…
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Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home
#173Never 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…
At Sun we experienced a new metrics fad every other year. Once they tried to use bug report clearance rate, so a friend said "I'm going to code myself a minivan" at a meeting. That metric didn't last.
You have to have a great deal of sympathy for the management of software-heavy companies. They've no idea how to manage software development. Nobody really knows how to. It sucks. Oh, well, I suppose there is a way: mind the bottom line, do not over-hire, and have good managers of the old sort: the type that know how to keep tabs on their direct reports without being overbearing. Business schools won't go for that.
Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home
#174Never 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…
100% correct. If it were possible to measure productivity, the Soviet Union would have won the Cold War and cleaned the capitalists' clocks.
Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home
#175Never 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…
At Sun we experienced a new metrics fad every other year. Once they tried to use bug report clearance rate, so a friend said "I'm going to code myself a minivan" at a meeting. That metric didn't last. You have to have a great deal of sympathy for the management of software-heavy companies. They've no idea how to manage software development. Nobody really knows how to. It sucks. Oh, well, I suppose there is a way: min…
Dilbert had this punchline in 1995: https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13
It's possible one of Scott Adams's moles was at this meeting, since they seem to be omnipresent and omniscient.
Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> The review process is a complete sham.
It's a complete sham--up until the moment it's about to fire you.
Yeah, I've been in the "Look, that deadline is HARD. If you don't figure out how to do something useful by it, the whole GROUP, including me and you, are fired. So, are you gonna figure something out or should I fire you now and get someone else?"
That can wake you up, reeeaaaal quick.
> 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.
And you know what? The "schmoozer" might actually be more productive.
One of the articles on HN recently was about how senior people tend to avoid work that might get thrown away.
"Grinders" are useful, but they can also go grinding in the wrong direction or keep grinding on something that no longer needs to be done because conditions changed and they aren't paying attention. This is especially true if they get too irascible so nobody wants to talk to them.
The "schmoozer" might see that the assignment given doesn't quite match up with what the end customer (either internal or external) actually needs and adjust things appropriately. Or, perhaps, just delivers something "close enough" but takes a lot less time and makes the recipient happier.
As I became increasingly senior I spent far more time "schmoozing" than getting concrete engineering done.
Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home
#177Earlier 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…
>The question that we need to ask more often is, if productivity is so hard to measure, maybe it is possibly because we might not be creating as much value as we have largely tricked ourselves into believing we have. at a very low level productivity is hard to measure because it's tacit and implicit rather than explicit. The reason why we can measure the productivity of a business is because it responds to price sign…
This. The productivity of a business is its ROI, roughly its profit + reinvestment. The productivity of a salesperson is also easy to measure: sales / compensation and travel costs. It's much harder to measure the productivity of an individual employee who is not a salesperson or directly supporting sales. Some are rockstars, and these you know when you see them. But the rest... it's harder to tell. Metrics can only do so much, and often they are easily gamed -- they just aren't directly related to the bottom line because these aren't salespeople, but you can't only have salespeople either. Take sprints: if you really want employees to hit every sprint then they'll work hard to hardly load their sprints. As you say, there isn't really a market inside a business, so it's hard to just look at the "bottom-line" for every non-sales force employee.
Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home
#178Dimon kind of throws them under the bus, doesn't he: "Work output by younger employees was particularly affected on Mondays and Fridays, according to findings discussed by Chief Executive Office Jamie Dimon in a private meeting with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analysts. That, along with worries that remote work is no substitute for organic interaction, are part of why the biggest U.S. bank is urging more workers to retur…
Do you think he’s just lying about it? When I was a younger worker I certainly did slack off on Friday and Monday when I could get away with it. I’ve worked in more than one office where people started drinking on Friday afternoon in the office when the CEO was out of town.
He wouldn't need to be lying to be blind to data that doesn't fit the desired conclusion or to torture the data until they confess.
Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
At Sun we experienced a new metrics fad every other year. Once they tried to use bug report clearance rate, so a friend said "I'm going to code myself a minivan" at a meeting. That metric didn't last. You have to have a great deal of sympathy for the management of software-heavy companies. They've no idea how to manage software development. Nobody really knows how to. It sucks. Oh, well, I suppose there is a way: min…
Dilbert had this punchline in 1995: https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13 It's possible one of Scott Adams's moles was at this meeting, since they seem to be omnipresent and omniscient.
Ahhh, I'd missed that. Thanks for setting me straight!
Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
That isn't productivity, productivity is value/duration.