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Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

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Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#81

Post by MilStdJunkie »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #3

My happiness in a job is inversely proportional to the diligence with which they track time and estimations.

How about tracking your time in increments of 6 minutes?

Also, their system doesn't know what minutes are. You have to convert to decimal hours on the fly.

BUT WAIT THERES MORE

Every six minutes, also need to know which 30 character charge code you were working on.

Also also the 15 character Work Breakdown Structure number (Sending Email, Review Process, etc). Which changes by Project.

Also also also the 24 character project number.

All of these. EVERY SIX MINUTES. OR YOU ARE FIRED. Single mistake, KICK. Here's your box. Goodbye.

Keep in mind this is all for salaried staff. And. AND!!!! You can only charge a maximum of 1.7% hours on overhead tasks. Overhead tasks like . . liiiiiiikkkkeee . . DOING YOUR TIMECARD.

Over the decades they've gotten really good at staffing with people who are good at timecards and/or who lie a lot.

(I've moved on, thanks for asking, but it took me far too long)

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#82

Post by scruple »

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…

I worked in healthcare robotics for a spell. The management fell 50/50 into these buckets. More than once I had to remind some self-important person that we, in fact, did not "save lives" and that that was firmly the business of medical practitioners.

The first time it happened to me, I thought it was a joke. A manager wanted my help to debug some non-critical issue with one of the devices in the field and I told him multiple times that I had a hard stop at like 4PM for a dentist appointment. As it was getting close to the time I had to go, I kept reminding him and he wouldn't acknowledge me. I finally stood up and said I had to go and he responded, "Fine, go. It's not like we're saving lives around here." If I had been more confident in myself and my skills I'd have quit on the spot. Instead I just made some comment about how I'd help him the following morning and left.

I committed to myself to not let anyone get away with it again, though, and thankfully my manager, who was engineer #1 in this org and at the time was an engineering director, felt the same and had the political capital to call people out for it after hearing story.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#83

Post by wiredfool »

ehnto wrote: post #71
wiredfool wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, d…

At the time, I was a worker bee. Small dev staff (2 or 3, with 5-10 projects, so 1 person per project), Small company. CEO/Founder was the boss, and direct manager of everyone. I was 3/5 time, and only 2 days a week in the office, with others in and out of the office as well.

So we do this thing, and the dev team impression is that it's taking a lot of time, but it was good because it was a way for micromanaging in bulk. But then we turn around and add up the time and it was a concrete way to say "This is taking too much time" without coming out and saying: "This is crap".

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#84

Post by muzani »

etothepii wrote: post #39
donw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for piling dirty dishes in the sink.

I've always been one for doing dishes. BUT, a cleaner can usually be hired for minimum/living wage. An extra couple hours of the cleaners time so everyone comes in to a clean office strikes me as likely being worth it in the long run.

Dishes are usually the responsibility of the eater where I've worked. All offices have cleaners, but their responsibility should be getting rid of dust and such, not the sink.

Besides, the cleaners are usually there on a schedule, and I think it says something about someone's ego if they can't take half a minute to wash a cup of coffee. It's not like we're deep frying things in the pantry.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#85

Post by GistNoesis »

bitshiftfaced wrote: post #80
GistNoesis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you start with k cans in the fridge, you take one there is now k-1 cans in the fridge, you add back two, according to the rule, there are now k+1 can in the fridge.

You and your colleagues repeat this process n times, n being the number of total cans drank. At the end of the repeating n times there are k+n cans in the fridge, and n cans in the garbage bin.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#86

Post by quickthrower2 »

MilStdJunkie wrote: post #81
quickthrower2 wrote: post #3

My happiness in a job is inversely proportional to the diligence with which they track time and estimations.

How about tracking your time in increments of 6 minutes? Also, their system doesn't know what minutes are. You have to convert to decimal hours on the fly. BUT WAIT THERES MORE Every six minutes, also need to know which 30 character charge code you were working on. Also also the 15 character Work Breakdown Structure number (Sending Email, Review Process, etc). Which changes by Project. Also also also the 24 character…

My sympathies! Legal is definitely not for me.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#87

Post by muzani »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #10

A classic on this topic: https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...

Kinda weird but I noticed we were happy to be paid in soda for extra work. Sometimes someone does a night shift, they take a Mountain Dew and don't replace it.

It's not at all a fair trade, but it's satisfying to be at the keyboard with an unhealthy drink. You're not supposed to be working at nights, either. It's just what hacker culture feels like - rebelling against the best practices for some hint of productivity.

Someone who charges for sodas doesn't get it.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#88

Post by ehnto »

wiredfool wrote: post #83
ehnto wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, d…

At the time, I was a worker bee. Small dev staff (2 or 3, with 5-10 projects, so 1 person per project), Small company. CEO/Founder was the boss, and direct manager of everyone. I was 3/5 time, and only 2 days a week in the office, with others in and out of the office as well. So we do this thing, and the dev team impression is that it's taking a lot of time, but it was good because it was a way for micromanaging in b…

Fair enough, as always real life is more nuanced than internet discussions. I know we do the things we do for good reasons, and with the best information we can get.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#89

Post by muzani »

dugmartin wrote: post #13

Mine is when human beings working at the company start becoming referred to as “resources” instead of people.

Counterpoint: I've seen this go okay when it's to make things impersonal. Rather than saying the engineering team is slow, we just say there's not enough resources in engineering. Rather than saying Diane is being stretched out across too many teams, we say we need more resources in design.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#90

Post by MilStdJunkie »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #86
MilStdJunkie wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about tracking your time in increments of 6 minutes? Also, their system doesn't know what minutes are. You have to convert to decimal hours on the fly. BUT WAIT THERES MORE Every six minutes, also need to know which 30 character charge code you were working on. Also also the 15 character Work Breakdown Structure number (Sending Email, Review Process, etc). Which changes by Project. Also also also the 24 character…

My sympathies! Legal is definitely not for me.

Oh man, I wish it was legal.

Nah, this is defense. Now, it's normal to have this sort of charge structure, but not for everyone in the entire company. That was the canary, I guess, but I lost track of all the various red flags . . alarmingly quickly. It's like the contractor didn't have its own policies, then they got a contract, and just applied whatever was in their first contract as their generic process.

Bargain basement staff, makes it even more absurd that they're tracking six minute increments for everyone. As if the salaried nature of the workforce didn't do that already.

Case studies in "why you don't let customers set business process", because then you have dozens of businesses inside your business.

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