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27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

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Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#61

Post by irrational »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #52
quickthrower2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At my university marks and course content was divided up between exams and group projects. Individuals would optimize their own scores by focusing on exam tested content and hoping someone else in the group would carry them. People who wanted top marks always had to carry the entire group as the other members knew they could get away with not contributing and holding the grade hostage. It was a fucking nightmare, and…

Whenever I taught a course with group work, I would have the students give all the other students in the group a score each week. All the scores had to add up to 100. They had no problem giving any student not participating a zero. There was a formula we would run the scores through to give each student a final score that was a percentage of the total score for the project and their group participation scores. It worked quite well to give those who worked the hardest the most points and those who didn’t do any work zero points.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#62

Post by baq »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #52
quickthrower2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At my university marks and course content was divided up between exams and group projects. Individuals would optimize their own scores by focusing on exam tested content and hoping someone else in the group would carry them. People who wanted top marks always had to carry the entire group as the other members knew they could get away with not contributing and holding the grade hostage. It was a fucking nightmare, and…

This whole discussion is about that you should expect and embrace this experience because while it’s possible to not end up in an organization like that, it… doesn’t happen often. This is the rare case where uni grading and real life are actually in sync.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#63

Post by pydry »

cyberpunk wrote: post #35
mettamage wrote: post #33

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.

It's justifying why the new hire gets more than their manager that is really hard.

It's also easier to book a high fixed cost than a high ongoing cost.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#64

Post by scarface_74 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #23
anonreeeeplor wrote: post #3

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…

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.

That’s part of the reason behind hiring consultants - both strategy consultants who are brought in for their subject matter expertise and staff augmentation “consultants”.

On the other hand, I’m more than willing to accept my 35% lower compensation to have a full time job than I know I could make if I went independent.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#65

Post by magicalhippo »

mettamage wrote: post #33
fxtentacle wrote: post #23

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.

Guess it's different over in the states, but my boss said the cost to the company is roughly 2x the salary. This includes taxes (not income tax), pension and such.

So 1.5x would be a steal in comparison.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#66

Post by scarface_74 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #38
anonreeeeplor wrote: post #3

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…

> That has been my entire career. Never seen it go differently. In my "big tech company", there's a thorough (and I think overall fair) evaluation process, and a very high performer can earn a significant amount of money, e.g. 10x the salary of a junior. People are also strongly incentized to deliver through bonuses and stock refresher. I'm not denying that what you describe exists in some (most?) companies, but ther…

A junior at BigTech averages around $170K. Are you really saying a high performer can make $1.7 million in compensation a year? I’m sure there are a very few that do.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#67

Post by cjbgkagh »

irrational wrote: post #61
cjbgkagh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my university marks and course content was divided up between exams and group projects. Individuals would optimize their own scores by focusing on exam tested content and hoping someone else in the group would carry them. People who wanted top marks always had to carry the entire group as the other members knew they could get away with not contributing and holding the grade hostage. It was a fucking nightmare, and…

Whenever I taught a course with group work, I would have the students give all the other students in the group a score each week. All the scores had to add up to 100. They had no problem giving any student not participating a zero. There was a formula we would run the scores through to give each student a final score that was a percentage of the total score for the project and their group participation scores. It wor…

They tried that, it turned into this metagame with reprisals where others would work together and gang up on you so it would end up being many against one. Basically step one was to find the sucker, step two is make it stick. If you had a rep for good grades then you were de facto the sucker. You could tank the group and hope to fair better in a reshuffle but it was a lemon market and the replacements would be just as bad and now everyone knows you have given your previous team members poor scores. People quickly learned to never do that. So part of the optimization was to present lecturers with what they want to see with only minor deviations between individual rankings, effectively a voting ring. Presenting a false projection of reality in order to metagame politics was accidentally good training for real world work - but it really sucks having to do the work of 4 people.

I’m sure if the lecturers cared they could have managed it properly but they didn’t I don’t know of any who did.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#68

Post by jwrallie »

glitchc wrote: post #16
anonreeeeplor wrote: post #3

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…

If management is listening to the superstar and translating it to the team to support them it is great.

If management expect people to just listen to the superstar directly it’s terrible, as the superstar has no time to do the actual work and is expected to lead instead.

That is the easiest way to kill talent, and strange enough most people are encouraged to go this way to grow within the company.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#69

Post by lll-o-lll »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #50
lll-o-lll wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It has always amazed me how differently sales people are treated compared to tech. 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…

> It’s also been fairly easy for tech teams to obfuscate performance and bamboozle managers who don’t understand tech.

Just as much a problem for sales oriented roles. Most “line managers” are experts in the field, so I don’t know if this is a valid point. In the anecdotal case, the managers still have sales targets and got to be managers by being the most effective sellers.

> 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).

Here we are talking about producing, which by its nature is the measurable stuff. I think we don’t have it because we (some we) don’t want it, not because it wouldn’t work.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#70

Post by irrational »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #67
irrational wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I taught a course with group work, I would have the students give all the other students in the group a score each week. All the scores had to add up to 100. They had no problem giving any student not participating a zero. There was a formula we would run the scores through to give each student a final score that was a percentage of the total score for the project and their group participation scores. It wor…

They tried that, it turned into this metagame with reprisals where others would work together and gang up on you so it would end up being many against one. Basically step one was to find the sucker, step two is make it stick. If you had a rep for good grades then you were de facto the sucker. You could tank the group and hope to fair better in a reshuffle but it was a lemon market and the replacements would be just a…

I should point out that I only taught online course. The students lived all over the world and never met in person.
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