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Ask HN: My coworker doesn't work. Does it make sense for me to say anything?

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Re: Ask HN: My coworker doesn't work. Does it make sense for me to say anything?

#81

Post by BoorishBears »

bko wrote: post #77
BoorishBears wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I pay someone $100 to come clean my house and they take my money and don't clean my house The difference is it's your house and the scope of work is completely defined by you. It's not complicated. - If they don't clean because they're sick, you're the one they tell. - If they didn't clean because they were busy unclogging the toilet, you're the one who should know. - If they didn't clean because they're waiting…

> And to the rest of your comment, I'm a tech lead with direct reports. Oof, so you'd be cool with people on your team not working? > I cannot imagine what kind of manager you have to be dealing with for them to take exception with quality insights such as "I keep getting blocked on X by Y" vs vague claims of "doing nothing and obfuscating". I like to work on teams that are effective where things get done. It is incr…

> Oof, so you'd be cool with people on your team not working?

Oof, so you work at places where people have 0 deliverables for a year?

Because on my teams people have deliverables. Is that what's hanging you up? Where I work they'll block things if they're doing 0 work.

If the deliverable is overseen by me I'll do my job and look into why it's not happening, and if the deliverable is due to a team member and never materializes, I'm saying that's something to bubble up.

> I like to work on teams that are effective where things get done.

If you say so... doesn't

> I guess I'm just more communicative.

I'm about effective communication.

If someone misses a single deliverable their first thought (hopefully) isn't going to be "this person has been slacking!". By the time someone has that thought damage is being done.

If instead they bring the deliverable up to me and I know they also missed a deliverable due to someone else... or they tend to miss deliverables related to X feature... or they missed the deliverable because of Y obligation...

Now we can have _effective conversations_.

I can find out if the person needs help learning how to work on X feature.

I can communicate there was a prior obligation so that we're not getting to the "this person is slacking!" conclusion

I can communicate a forming pattern before any one person comes to that conclusion too.

-

People should feel comfortable bringing up opinions. I wouldn't berate someone for saying someone else is slacking.

But this is HN and someone is asking for advice: I gave advice that keeps OP from alienating themselves for no reason and still doesn't hurt their manager's ability to be an effective manager.

It's important they don't sandbag their manager to avoid possible embarrassment, but 3 comments deep here I think I've stablished how any competent manager would have as good or better outcomes with this form of feedback...

Re: Ask HN: My coworker doesn't work. Does it make sense for me to say anything?

#82

Post by theonething »

deanmoriarty wrote: post #52
guynamedloren wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"some mild stock appreciation".. quite an understatement. $250k (annual) appreciation in a year. Whew.

My perspective is skewed by several friends who made it HUGE by joining unicorns at the right time. My network is literally filled with senior developers who are earning $5M+ a year from the successful IPOs of 2020/2021, most after having been there less than 3 years. Crazy stuff. From that perspective, a FAANG growing 30% yoy looks like a risk-free rate of return :-)

> My network is literally filled with senior developers who are earning $5M+ a year from the successful IPOs

Most people here disdain stock options as worthless. And I guess for the most part they are with a few happy exceptions.

How early an employee do you have to be to get that kind of return?

Re: Ask HN: My coworker doesn't work. Does it make sense for me to say anything?

#83

Post by deanmoriarty »

theonething wrote: post #82
deanmoriarty wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My perspective is skewed by several friends who made it HUGE by joining unicorns at the right time. My network is literally filled with senior developers who are earning $5M+ a year from the successful IPOs of 2020/2021, most after having been there less than 3 years. Crazy stuff. From that perspective, a FAANG growing 30% yoy looks like a risk-free rate of return :-)

> My network is literally filled with senior developers who are earning $5M+ a year from the successful IPOs Most people here disdain stock options as worthless. And I guess for the most part they are with a few happy exceptions. How early an employee do you have to be to get that kind of return?

For the great unicorns, not that early. If you join as a senior engineer it’s relatively easy to get 250-400k in equity per year, so you just need to wait for the company to do 10X in order to make $3-5M a year. The math is different from the stock options you mention, we are talking about joining very late in the game, once the companies are already in the unicorn status. By that stage they don’t even give options anymore, just illiquid RSUs. The people who joined really early of course won the lottery and you have rank and file employees sitting on high 8 figures.

There are some interesting numbers here: https://iporegrets.com/

I know several people from AirBnB, Doordash, Snowflake who all joined around 2018 and made bank.

I was an early employee at a smaller startup that is still illiquid and my stock options (fully exercised) are worth $6M. They could still all go to $0.

Just by looking at myself and my immediate network, I wouldn’t say playing the startup game is necessarily like a lottery, the odds are better (but note that I still chose FAANG lately, as mentioned above). YMMV.

Re: Ask HN: My coworker doesn't work. Does it make sense for me to say anything?

#84

Post by icedchai »

Mention it. I’ve done this before with various do-nothings who manage to pawn off their work on others. The last guy I complained about was a do-nothing PM / scrum master who would dial in from his kid’s soccer games, not contribute ever, and make others fill out his TPS reports on a regular basis. The guy is still there but at least I don’t have to deal with him.

Re: Ask HN: My coworker doesn't work. Does it make sense for me to say anything?

#85

Post by icedchai »

notRobot wrote: post #3

Say nothing. It shouldn't matter to you what they are or are not doing. You do work, you get paid. That's all that's relevant to you. I do understand why you find this frustrating, of course – most people would. But I can't see anything good coming out of you bringing this up – how would you even go about doing that?

It’s not that hard to bring up. I get asked “how’s it going with Joe?” I respond: “not good. He doesn’t seem to do any work, barely understands the project, and makes Jane fill out his reports because he had no clue.” These sorts of chats can be a real laugh when you’re near FIRE.

Re: Ask HN: My coworker doesn't work. Does it make sense for me to say anything?

#87

Post by grepped »

anonygler wrote: post #17

I'd set up a 1:1 to discuss strategies for falling through the cracks yourself. I had a co-worker at Google who would go fishing in the middle of the day, and that was before the pandemic. Sweet gig.

Who catches fish in the middle of the day?

Re: Ask HN: My coworker doesn't work. Does it make sense for me to say anything?

#88

Post by shashurup »

I think the first issue you need to address is your frustration. It is definitely caused by unreasonable expectation of "a salary must always reflect a value a person brings". It would be great if that is true, but in reality it often isn't.

Once you fix this it would be a lot easier to decide what to do. I have heard starting a comic line with that kind of man as one of the characters may be extremely fulfilling and benefitial for the rest of us :-)

Re: Ask HN: My coworker doesn't work. Does it make sense for me to say anything?

#89

Post by kamaal »

ratg13 wrote: post #55
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #27

> " Is there any scenario in which this makes sense for me to mention something to my manager or should I just keep my mouth shut? " The only thing you should bring up to your manager is if the person is not meeting their commitments in a way that impacts you meeting your own commitments; you do want the responsibility for that to land where it should. Even then, do it in a non-accusatory way. Beyond that, it's just…

There is a saying that goes, "the fastest way to demotivate a good employee is to allow them to watch you tolerate a bad one" Not all managers are aware of this. Everything you say is true, however, I have also witnessed first hand this sort of thing drain a company of talent. It's only after everyone else leaves and maybe you leave yourself where you start to question whether watching the whole company lose it's tal…

Also "the fastest way to demotivate a good employee is to allow them to watch you reward a bad one"

This happens more frequently and anybody rewarded is automatically assumed to be better regardless of their contributions.

Re: Ask HN: My coworker doesn't work. Does it make sense for me to say anything?

#90

Post by _8j50 »

aaomidi wrote: post #71
_8j50 wrote: post #31

Yes keep your mouth shut. I have the opposite problem of doing too much but people who get bothered about other people's laziness are my pet peeve. Unless you are a manager, managing people is not your responsibility. If you do well and offer your support to get them to where they need to be, you are doing your best, take the nice paycheck home and enjoy! I have no idea what people are going through or what they brin…

Basically don't police your coworkers for the sake of your company. The only time you should step in is to literally save someone from being actively harmed. E.g. Hateful comments by some coworker, etc.

Yeah, or when they are causing harm to you or your work (endanger your career/living).
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