41–50 of 287 posts
Why would we see a 80/20 distribution when most human abilities are distributed on a bell curve? I don’t think we really have the tools to reliably measure performance, because performance can mean so many things in so many different contexts. And yes, this can include “process.” The referred McKinsey study talks about politics. Is success in democratic politics really defined by content or by your ability to build a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's why I incorporated a tiny company. Sometimes, companies will interview me and then when I tell them my salary expectations, they usually pretend to be offended and refuse by arguing that it would destroy the salary structure inside their company. But that doesn't really mean anything because many of them are happy to book my consulting company at 1.5x that salary afterwards.
I wonder if you ask them about this discrepancy and how they view it. Personally, I find it weird, but wonder how they'd justify the 1.5x expense.
Why would we see a 80/20 distribution when most human abilities are distributed on a bell curve? I don’t think we really have the tools to reliably measure performance, because performance can mean so many things in so many different contexts. And yes, this can include “process.” The referred McKinsey study talks about politics. Is success in democratic politics really defined by content or by your ability to build a…
I know someone that works in a sales oriented profession and who manages a large number of people. Their company is ruthless, you get only a couple of weeks to demonstrate you can hit the targets, and after that maybe a couple of weeks of grace after the hard talking to. Less than 50% of new hires make it through probation. Staff that survive all have the same attributes: excellent sales ability and focused determination. It also allows in a high percentage of narcissistic bastards though.
I don’t like the idea, but I wonder if a similar metric based probation would achieve the same in this industry. If you want people who can pump out quality content at a higher than average rate, set the bar high and cull ruthlessly during probation.
Nothing drives me crazier than working with people that are solely focused on process (and reporting), than considering the process in the context of getting the job done properly and efficiently.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if you ask them about this discrepancy and how they view it. Personally, I find it weird, but wonder how they'd justify the 1.5x expense.
Contractors can be billed to a project, it’s much easier to pass with the finance dept than justifying why one new hire should get 4x what someone else with the same job title gets.
some enterprising manager realizes this, makes up a new job title (that sound important) to justify the 4x salary, and thus lead to job title inflation as other people sees such a title earning high.
Corporations, at their root, are an arbitrage on the fact that other corporations follow the bell curve. The entire goal of salaries and “teams” in my experience, is to ENSURE that high performers get diluted and averaged in with mediocre performers so the company can pretend the high performers don’t exist. This was my experience in (large co). I have seen situations where a single IC is dragging a division of 30 pe…
Idea is that they will outlive any human life or it would be possible to detach from any single person.
There is of course cost attached of not being fully efficient, but that is irrelevant in bigger scale.
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"Their boss looks down and sees Director managing 30 people and getting amazing result X, where X is 90% the effort of the one super star." This is interesting because it was my experience in school as well. In most group projects, 1 or 2 people would carry the rest of the group.
I admit I was sometimes carried. In creative work this is bound to happen. All people firing on all cylinders and coordinating well is a rarity in creative work. It might work in a kitchen or sailing boat though.
You have the type where one person is the visionary, is capable, but doesn't have the patience to do the grunt work and only wants to do the most prestigous or "important" shit. They do it well, but expect the rest of the team to do the thankless stuff.
This is the type i hate, and i rather not have them.
The other type is someone who is self-less, and just does the work regardless of self-interest or agenda. They will do both prestigious work, and will also do thankless work, as long as it contributes to the success of the project. They will stay late, fix up other's mistakes, etc, without complaints or expectation that others do the same.
This is the type i admire and want to work with.
Corporations, at their root, are an arbitrage on the fact that other corporations follow the bell curve. The entire goal of salaries and “teams” in my experience, is to ENSURE that high performers get diluted and averaged in with mediocre performers so the company can pretend the high performers don’t exist. This was my experience in (large co). I have seen situations where a single IC is dragging a division of 30 pe…
Actually, that's how the world works most of the time. Superstars also know it and are used to it from early childhood. They are expected to carry the load and equally importantly, the team is expected to listen to them. It works like this in all walks of life, because simply put, human beings are not equal in ability. Things break down when the team and management stop listening. That's when the superstar actually g…
Corporations, at their root, are an arbitrage on the fact that other corporations follow the bell curve. The entire goal of salaries and “teams” in my experience, is to ENSURE that high performers get diluted and averaged in with mediocre performers so the company can pretend the high performers don’t exist. This was my experience in (large co). I have seen situations where a single IC is dragging a division of 30 pe…
"Their boss looks down and sees Director managing 30 people and getting amazing result X, where X is 90% the effort of the one super star." This is interesting because it was my experience in school as well. In most group projects, 1 or 2 people would carry the rest of the group.
> Price’s law says that 50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.
Why would we see a 80/20 distribution when most human abilities are distributed on a bell curve? I don’t think we really have the tools to reliably measure performance, because performance can mean so many things in so many different contexts. And yes, this can include “process.” The referred McKinsey study talks about politics. Is success in democratic politics really defined by content or by your ability to build a…
I hesitate to write this, but I think a counterbalance is needed. In software development, there are things you can measure. For example, you can put a new starter on a big pile of bugs and say “get through these”. You can measure throughput of work tasks, or story points, or lines of code. Can people game this stuff? Yes, but managers can be the check on such things (and have managers of their own). I know someone t…
One of the historical reasons has been that it’s very hard to find and hire tech people - I wonder if that is changing?
It’s also been fairly easy for tech teams to obfuscate performance and bamboozle managers who don’t understand tech.
With sales the performance criteria tends to be very simple and there aren’t really any good excuses for failure (at least none that seem to be accepted).