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Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

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Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#71

Post by ehnto »

wiredfool wrote: post #65
ehnto wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a massive drain on morale. Billable hours sure, but tracking non-billable hours is just making management's job my job. I the impact it has is regularly underestimated.

I want to know unbillable time, because coordination overhead and other crap can grow and eat into productive time. We put in sprints and standups (in a small co, With 2n projects) at one point, and tracking made us realize that this ceremony was costing us 15% of our time and maybe giving us 1% utility.

I hope I'm not being too short, but why did it take atomic tracking from all your employees to figure that out? You should have known that when you implemented sprints and standups.

I guess that's what I mean by making it my job. It shouldn't be too difficult in small companies to keep track of how much impact unbillable process has. Attend a standup, how long did it take? Probably takes about that long every time, do some quick math. Ask your developers, do they feel it's worthwhile? No? Scrap it, make it shorter.

I can appreciate the impact of unbillable hours on the bottom line, and the impact of uncaught billable hours as well. But surely a PM can manage that without having to track every minute of the day? Set a guideline for billable hours per week, try to enable people to meet it. Be supportive rather than punitive.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#72

Post by DharmaPolice »

tornadofart wrote: post #6
blueflow wrote: post #2

How jokes are reacted to. Jokes can be unfunny or tasteless, but when someone argues big concepts that a joke must not be made, its a big red flag.

All within reason, I assume? Or would you be OK with jokes about skin color and such? I'm not humoring you, I'm genuinely interested in your answer.

>Or would you be OK with jokes about skin color

I would, although as with everything it's context dependent. My boss is African and has on more than one occasion got my name mixed up with another colleague (we're white). In a meeting he did it again, realised his mistake and was on the verge of saying something but caught himself. I offered in mock outrage - "Well, all white people look alike - is that it?" to which he burst out laughing as that was exactly what he was going to say. But that kind of humour (whether it's funny or not) is not at anyone's expense. It also took place between colleagues who have worked together for years now and in a setting we're reasonably sure no-one is going to take offence.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#73

Post by igetspam »

beardyw wrote: post #16

In a similar vein I visited Cyprus some years ago. In the middle of nowhere was a shaded spot with a few tables, a fridge and a plastic tub. You took a beer out of the fridge and put the money in the tub. That was how it worked.

I just moved to New England. There are firewood, egg and produce stands everywhere like that. When my new flock of chicks is laying, we'll probably do the same (we don't eat the eggs or the chickens, we just like the pets). Part of our property is a blueberry field and our neighbor is going to let us run a upick through their property, since it's closer to our field than our house is. I love communities like this.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#74

Post by toomuchtodo »

igetspam wrote: post #73
beardyw wrote: post #16

In a similar vein I visited Cyprus some years ago. In the middle of nowhere was a shaded spot with a few tables, a fridge and a plastic tub. You took a beer out of the fridge and put the money in the tub. That was how it worked.

I just moved to New England. There are firewood, egg and produce stands everywhere like that. When my new flock of chicks is laying, we'll probably do the same (we don't eat the eggs or the chickens, we just like the pets). Part of our property is a blueberry field and our neighbor is going to let us run a upick through their property, since it's closer to our field than our house is. I love communities like this.

Good find, enjoy the community and the overall experience.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#75

Post by ehnto »

gnat wrote: post #19
ehnto wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a massive drain on morale. Billable hours sure, but tracking non-billable hours is just making management's job my job. I the impact it has is regularly underestimated.

Very hard to know if you've missed logging some billable time if your work day isn't in the time tracking system. We hemorrhaged billable hours when I said ppl didn't have to log non-billable time. You'd end up with a 2.5h block and it was unclear if that was 2.5h of internal meetings and email and whatnot, or 1h of forgot-to-time billable and 1.5h of genuinely unbillable. It's a pain in the ass but people are fallib…

Admittedly I've lived exactly what you're saying, I do get it. But I'd love to explore less impactful alternatives. It depends a lot on the companies attitude towards it, and how it's implemented too. If the process of tracking time is too complicated, with too many layers of management wrapped up in the tracking process, you have a brand new overhead, and it's saddled with stress and miscommunication. Tracking non-billable hours can at least be done in a reasonable way, and maybe you're doing that .

You can see the difference between asking someone to track "Meetings" as a line item, and asking them to track "Meetings for client X to job number 22324, wait no, that was last months, the new job number is 22342, and it's not billable this month, but next month it's billable again, I'm not the PM for next month so you'll have to chase up the job number with the new PM..."

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#76

Post by daltont »

Twenty or thirty years ago it was always a bad sign when someone is assigned to something with a name like "Special Projects". It meant the company didn't know what to do with you, but didn't want to fire/layoff just yet.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#77

Post by piva00 »

noneeeed wrote: post #60
ihateolives wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in a city where Little Free Library system worked really well. There were library boxes all over the city. You take a book and you leave a book. Or bring it back next time. Or put it in the different box. There were people who scavanged those libraries for books they could sell, but overall the system worked well. There was always something random to take and read, something you'd normally not read, but becau…

Quite a lot of the old red phone boxes in the UK have been turned into these. They work great. We have one in our nearest park.

There are a few of those in Oslo as well!

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#79

Post by YesWeWill »

eastbound wrote: post #41
pingpongrandom wrote: post #22

This may be a bit of a different scale, but pay attention to how many lawyers are in the company. If the amount dramatically increases for some unknown reason, it's probably a good time to depart.

I left some famous startup, not because it reached 1000 employees, but because the motto changed from: “Be the change you seek” to “We advance humanity”. With a little legless girl from Africa, for whom we build the software that helps the doctor that helps the girl. I still have the poster hanging behind me as a CEO. To remind people of what not to become. We’re just making fucking software, don’t stay late, go take…

To be honest, helping doctors in Africa is one of the few things I'd gladly label as advancing humanity.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#80

Post by bitshiftfaced »

GistNoesis wrote: post #57
taffronaut wrote: post #5

Every time I take a can of soda from the fridge, I replace it with two. I exhort my colleagues to do the same. However we have yet to reach my goal of 2^64 cans which makes me suspect there are some bad apples.

I don't get it. Although it may seems like it is an exponential process, when following this rule, the number of cans currently in the fridge is just the total number ever consumed. This process is limited by people soda consumption.

*twice the total consumed. If you count up all cans at the start of the day, and if you drink them all, then at the end of the day, you have 2x. If you start with one, then after a year you have 2^364.
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