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Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

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Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#91

Post by eastbound »

YesWeWill wrote: post #79
eastbound wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but we’re only making software for them.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#92

Post by wombatpm »

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.

Government contracting. I worked for a Non-profit that was just as crazy with timekeeping. All of that detail went into generating the billing statement. The different activities were subject to different base rates as well as different overhead rates, depending what was negotiated in the contract with which ever agency we were dealing with.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#93

Post by necovek »

hk__2 wrote: post #67
necovek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even then, your "C++ resource" will perform completely differently based on the person they are: eg. a junior C++ engineer will be slower than a mid/senior engineer, and an engineer providing a more maintainable solution might be slower too (and somebody un/familiar with the problem domain or API in use). I don't see how planning work for a "C++ resource" helps other than faking it over and over again.

In my specific case we all have roughly the same experience with each technology so it’s fine to consider people as interchangeable. Of course that doesn’t mean we don’t take preferences into account; it’s just to have a rough idea of our roadmap and know if we need to recruit.

Certainly, it's entirely possible you have people who can do roughly the same type of work.

You still don't benefit at all from calling them "resources" — at best, nobody minds, until you hire someone who does :) I mean, this is not even a nerdy or funny name that only certain people would enjoy, so why not simply stick with "people"?

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#94

Post by bitshiftfaced »

GistNoesis wrote: post #85
bitshiftfaced wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*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.

If you look at it that way, then the daily growth is only linear when the daily n is constant. When the daily n = number of cans to start with that day, then the daily growth is 2^n.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#95

Post by necovek »

dusted wrote: post #69
hk__2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my specific case we all have roughly the same experience with each technology so it’s fine to consider people as interchangeable. Of course that doesn’t mean we don’t take preferences into account; it’s just to have a rough idea of our roadmap and know if we need to recruit.

I agree. Also, if people are so uniquely skilled that each and every task can only be made by a specific person (excuse me, "human being") then your bus-factor is 1 and a single person leaving, getting sick (or indeed, hit by a bus) means death for the project.. That's terrible. It's entirely reasonable to think of work and people using separate terms, I'd argue it's probably healthy too.. Now, that's not the same as…

> uniquely skilled

I was mostly referring to how we all have different levels of expertise in some narrower domains. Just like your example of you being 1.3x at JS and 0.5x for C++: you can do C++ on a project, but you can't allocate two weeks on the C++ part of the project without deciding if it's you or 1.5x person doing the work. IOW, your roadmap is "faked".

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#96

Post by BrandoElFollito »

ihateolives wrote: post #32
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 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…

There are plenty of those around Versailles. They are always full, I had a hard time stuffing books there when I had spare ones.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#97

Post by BrandoElFollito »

etothepii wrote: post #46
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've always genuinely been baffled by how Theranos was able to hire all those security guards and making everyone that left the company sign an NDA.

If the NDA was covering things beyond the legal requirements (you cannot tell about company secrets one tout leave, au least where I live) and you got extra money for that, why not?

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#98

Post by donw »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #35
gorbachev wrote: post #11

The difference between plebs' and bosses' seating arrangements. If plebs get second hand, barely functional chairs/desks, hand-me-downs as computing equipment and insufficient lighting while bosses get a corner office and a $10K desk, it's pretty clear who they value and who they don't, which normally also extend to how seriously the plebs' opinions/suggestions are taken.

Once in a company we moved and people found out it would be open office layouts - coming from team offices. My boss took a lot of effort to explain how nice open office is, how productivity will benefit, and better working together. When we moved we found out he had his own office

Yeah, the problem isn't necessarily the open plan. Those work if you design them well, but most companies don't, aiming for "urban chic" rather than "this is a place for people to get stuff done".

The problem is the "some pigs are more equal than others".

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#99

Post by donw »

afandian wrote: post #50
Markoff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make sense, if everyone done it you would run out of fridge capacity within few hours, why not take one, replace one?

I think it was unspoken in the GP's comment that you would have to acquire an exponential number of fridges too. Maybe this is the solution to the empty office space problem?

Maybe this is why Amazon recommends refrigerators for like six months after you buy one.

Re: Ask HN: Work Culture Canary?

#100

Post by KingOfCoders »

donw wrote: post #98
KingOfCoders wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once in a company we moved and people found out it would be open office layouts - coming from team offices. My boss took a lot of effort to explain how nice open office is, how productivity will benefit, and better working together. When we moved we found out he had his own office

Yeah, the problem isn't necessarily the open plan. Those work if you design them well, but most companies don't, aiming for "urban chic" rather than "this is a place for people to get stuff done". The problem is the "some pigs are more equal than others".

The team eagerly wanted to redecorate, I "allowed" (for those who felt they needed this) the team to redecorate and move their desks how they saw the best layout. Boy did I get into trouble with the designer and corporate policy, because the desks in the whole enterprise were layouted in that (for developers bad) way (long rows). I threatened to leave and the team got their layout (4 desk islands, lots of moveable whiteboards, plants and dividers).
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