Ask HN: What should I say to my manager when my performance starts suffering? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What should I say to my manager when my performance starts suffering?

#141

Post by staysaasy » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

Some quick thoughts:

* Is there another reaction? Depends on what "doing ____" is? If it's recreational (e.g. daydreaming) that's it's whole own problem (and it is a problem). If it's another task on the job (e.g. spending more time working with team Y than us - which happens with ad-hoc resource allocation), it's normal IMO.

* More broadly, re: tedium - it depends on the role and the expectations that were set. Some companies have roles that are not meant to be grown out of, but simply left.

* Also, re: just doing a worse job over time - I don't think that's the only option. We all do things that are repetitive (e.g. wash the dishes). Many get better over time, many get worse, many just do the same quality forever.

Re: Ask HN: What should I say to my manager when my performance starts suffering?

#142

Post by hef19898 » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

browningstreet wrote: post #135

arrosenberg wrote: post #22

It sounds like the manager may have an intuition that your partner is burned out and is giving them an opening to discuss it. Generally if a person has done good work in the past, and now they aren't, there is a reason for it, and clear communication is the quickest way to surface and resolve the issue. This is somewhat situation dependent - some workplaces are truly toxic. > how can a company expect to retain employ…

At the last tech place I worked, they celebrated the 25 year tenure of an employee who had essentially the same job for all 25 years -- he created accounts and passwords for users. It's a SF based tech-ish company, one y'all have heard of, and as I did my consulting gig there, floating through the wave of SMEs and ICs and Directors and VPs and the history of all those who had left or been fired, I thought about that…

I admire people like that. Maybe one day I can achieve some similar level of zen, I sure hope so.

Re: Ask HN: What should I say to my manager when my performance starts suffering?

#143

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

iNane9000 wrote: post #129

arrosenberg wrote: post #22

It sounds like the manager may have an intuition that your partner is burned out and is giving them an opening to discuss it. Generally if a person has done good work in the past, and now they aren't, there is a reason for it, and clear communication is the quickest way to surface and resolve the issue. This is somewhat situation dependent - some workplaces are truly toxic. > how can a company expect to retain employ…

Agree with everything but also want to note pulling levers for 30 years is correlated with unionization in those industries. Jobs were protected by unions even if it meant higher costs and lower productivity.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What should I say to my manager when my performance starts suffering?

#144

Post by ItsMonkk » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #25

sircastor wrote: post #3

I’ve found that when most managers ask questions, they’re just trying to get a sense of what’s going on. I wouldn’t over analyze it. I would also suggest that honest answers are the best. If you’re having a hard time doing the work, is there something else you could be doing? As much as it doesn’t feel like it, companies do not want to fire employees. It’s expensive to lose someone who knows the business, and expensi…

> It’s expensive to lose someone who knows the business, and expensive to hire someone. That's not true. Letting people go is a great business strategy because it means companies don't need to give salary increases. They will right after that hire someone with less experience and making less money. But what about the business knowledge, you ask? Well, any company that knows what they're doing won't ever let important…

If you lose all knowledge of one of your systems, you need to rediscover what you already learned. This is extremely debilitating. But even if you don't lose all knowledge, as Brooks Law states

> It takes some time for the people added to a project to become productive. Brooks calls this the "ramp up" time. Software projects are complex engineering endeavors, and new workers on the project must first become educated about the work that has preceded them; this education requires diverting resources already working on the project, temporarily diminishing their productivity while the new workers are not yet contributing meaningfully. Each new worker also needs to integrate with a team composed of several engineers who must educate the new worker in their area of expertise in the code base, day by day. In addition to reducing the contribution of experienced workers (because of the need to train), new workers may even make negative contributions, for example, if they introduce bugs that move the project further from completion.

The more churn that you have, the slower you can move. If you are Edison and have not yet created the light-bulb, but you have tried 1500 different attempts, and you were tasked with training a replacement, do you really think you would walk through all 1500 of those experiments? To be able to move forward, you not only need to know the happy path(what ends up in the code-base), but what doesn't, and why. That almost never makes it to the new hire. They will make that mistake again.

Re: Ask HN: What should I say to my manager when my performance starts suffering?

#145

Post by _y5hn » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

ng55QPSK wrote: post #98

Question is: What should i say to my manager when her/his performance starts suffering?

Managers already won, no matter what transpires.

That's what they don't want you to understand.

I got nothing against managers as people. But as a role, it is highly person dependent and most people are utterly bad at it, same as teaching.

Re: Ask HN: What should I say to my manager when my performance starts suffering?

#146

Post by yebyen » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #140

yebyen wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What are you working on now? Why does that part take so long? Can we skip it altogether?" They're not stupid, they know a little bit about the path from point A to point B. I have never given an estimate that was not later called into question and asked to be reduced. Usually much sooner in fact. In many cases, asking for an estimate is fishing for a way to make the problem easier to solve. But they don't really wan…

It is not just the quarter result, the managers also are evaluated based on what they did the last few months. If they miss their projects for the quarter there is no promotion, no pay raise.

Quarterly, monthly, whatever, ...it is the same problem. I'm talking about the dichotomy between optimizing for short-term results and maintaining a sustainable long-term vision (which does not necessarily devolve into a failed software project / team diaspora.)

If you have a good manager, you don't want them to be promoted because then it's a crap shoot whether you get another good one or not :) of course the pay raise is a compelling argument

I was only arguing against the idea that you can successfully keep your manager in the dark, you don't want that. You want a good manager who understands the problem domain well enough to anticipate these negative outcomes and who won't fixate on quarterly (or short-term) outcomes at the expense of long-term viability.

(A good manager also optimizes for your long-term success as well as their own!)

And it's not to say that optimizing for short-term goals is necessarily wrong every time. There's YAGNI – which is a perfectly reasonable argument to make at any time, but sometimes You Are Gonna Need It and there's an objective case in favor of not taking the shortcut because it will cost you in easily predictable ways.

Re: Ask HN: What should I say to my manager when my performance starts suffering?

#147

Post by davidgerard » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

Surprised at all the managers here who are well-intentioned, but don't seem to understand that there's a power imbalance here that means even innocuous, carefully-phrased sentences must first be checked for threats.

Re: Ask HN: What should I say to my manager when my performance starts suffering?

#148

Post by mustacheemperor » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #11

traway123 wrote: post #4

Well, it's better than the talk my manager gave me, "Looks like you're not as productive lately? What's going on? This place (bay area) is small, everyone knows everyone. Your reputation will follow you."

The world is far too big for anyone to care as to a minute detail of "Developer John Doe didn't meet my productivity metrics". That's worthy of a (mental) eye roll. Workers in this industry, at the moment, have the leverage, not the employers.

95% of the time someone attempts to bury or denigrate the reputation of another professional like that, it does more to damage their own reputation. The issue at hand is almost always as you quoted something relatively small and meaningless or at least related to context completely unknown to the audience. It only serves to advertise "I think I am bigly enough to talk crap about my former subordinates, so you should be very careful about working with me."

Re: Ask HN: What should I say to my manager when my performance starts suffering?

#149

Post by jiofih » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

ratww wrote: post #117

diydsp wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How do you get more clear? Consider this: "It's not our biggest account, but it does count for something, so I really want our team to get the demo online by Thursday, so I was thinking of having Jared work with you for for the next two days, or having you hold off on the Tachyon project until Fusion is ready. Which of those options sounds good to you?" These are the techniques used: The message began with "Just wan…

You basically took a whole long-form comment to repeat what I had already mentioned in my original message: > However I notice that the specific message on OP is a bit ambiguous, I would personally add some suggestions .

This is a brilliant take, explains how to be clear and direct as I mentioned, and all you can think of is “that’s exactly what I said”?

It’s not. If you can’t tell the difference, we’ll, there’s nothing else to add here, the answer is right under your nose.

Re: Ask HN: What should I say to my manager when my performance starts suffering?

#150

Post by jiofih » Tue, Jun 29, 2021, 6:23 PM UTC

Timpy wrote: post #102

jiofih wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not ask direct & clear then? I also think it sounds disingenuous. This kind of passive-aggression is what “cracking the whip” feels like for employees.

I don't know about this particular case, but direct and clear can be read more like "accusing" depending on your culture. I think this reads more like "hey is everything okay?" than "why are your numbers dipping?"

Definitely - personally I feel the opposite. The more indirect, the more offensive it reads. “Is everything ok?” tells me there is a problem I need to expose myself (am I underperforming? Do I look unwell? Did I say something wrong?). Feels like a trap.

I’d rather hear what the problem is and how they think it can be fixed. (EU based)