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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

#171

Post by closeparen »

jancsika wrote: post #139
closeparen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people see this, and yet the reaction of many is to be deeply, passionately outraged that two people could ever be recognized or compensated differently.

The problem here is that once you have a metric for outsized compensation you make it 10x easier for a cheater to snatch it up merely by turning it into a target. (Lines of code, commits, etc.) What's worse is that your metric is as likely to be out of sync as code comments. If you're lucky you can notice that a) a new "10x" is actually adding value in a way you never thought to measure, and b) you already spent that…

Sure, it’s difficult for people outside the group to reliably ascertain who actually contributed what and how it relates to the final output’s quality. Collective grading in group projects is a sacrifice of a small bit of justice for a great deal of administrative convenience - not the last time that will happen in a student’s life.

But when a system does bother with individual differences in contribution, inequality is seen as necessarily unjust. I don’t see how you can live through a group project and believe that. Some people contributing much more than others or being much more competent than others is eminently plausible! That’s how most things go!

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

#172

Post by wiseowise »

elzbardico wrote: post #126
p-e-w wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another reason why today's corporations love teams and flat hierarchies is because they turn "responsibility" into a post-modern concept that fluidly adapts to mean everything or nothing. One day the boss is the boss, the next day nobody is accountable for anything, and decisions are really just the magical synergy of team dynamics.

So called flat hierarchies also mean that the ones that have the real power can never be truly challenged. It is like climbing the hill and then cutting the rope to ensure nobody else can do it. I've seem this a lot in companies adopting agile. That was always a cabal that had all the real power and the benefits than come with it, but suddenly because of "self-organizing", "flat hierarchy", there was no more any more…

That hits really close to home. Literally in a situation right now where promotion is being dangled like a carrot in front of my face without any tangible path to acquire it. Overachiever my ass.

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

#173

Post by wiseowise »

asveikau wrote: post #132
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…

This seems like something between a conspiracy theory and your own ego going unchecked. I observed something like this, or at least I thought I did. With many more years of reflection, and there were hints along the way as it happened in realtime, I came to realize that the contribution of those I had written off as non-performers and dead weight was actually higher than I had estimated and difficult to actually quan…

How would you suggest to reward people who strive for more?

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

#174

Post by ochoseis »

apwell23 wrote: post #146
iwontberude wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Superstars are why I don’t try harder and am less engaged. They take all of the interesting ownership and inject themselves into every process and space for communication. I wait for these people to burn out and want to actually be a team member instead of a productivity bully hoarding opportunity for themselves. They want to be the first on everything so they can influence it to be more how they like, the rest of te…

> They take all of the interesting ownership How do they get to "take" as an IC.

Every team and individual have their own norms, but some people just take the agency to get shit done. In other words, when there’s work to be done they don’t feel the need to ask permission.

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

#175

Post by cudgy »

fxtentacle wrote: post #82
m_a_g wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t mind me asking, what specific area do you specialize in with your consulting work? I’d like to do what you do in the future and I’m just curious.

I do any kind of research and software development. But the most profitable tasks tend to be finding a new angle for how you can automate something. In Germany, there's still an almost endless supply of companies who urgently need to digitise their customer interactions so that they can react quickly to customer orders. A 2 week lead time for PCBs, for example, just doesn't work anymore if the Chinese competition is…

Nice. Your work eliminates jobs and transfers their salary to the business owner! Seems more like bean counting than tech.

Would be nice if there was more focus from software tech on making more opportunities for people rather than the trend of eliminating more humans from the workforce.

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

#176

Post by apwell23 »

ochoseis wrote: post #174
apwell23 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They take all of the interesting ownership How do they get to "take" as an IC.

Every team and individual have their own norms, but some people just take the agency to get shit done. In other words, when there’s work to be done they don’t feel the need to ask permission.

Can't OP do the same then instead of waiting on a team member to burn out . I think OP is barking up the wrong tree because the problem seems that their manager doesn't believe in them or maybe OP doesn't believe in themselves to step up and take responsibility .

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

#177

Post by kevmo314 »

starky wrote: post #44

I like the comparison of content over process. In my experience a small team full of highly skilled engineers that are motivated to get stuff done don't need much process because they will do the right thing. But once the team gets to a size where that isn't possible, you have to implement and enforce process in order to make sure that those who don't have that skill can be effective at their jobs. Nothing drives me…

> But once the team gets to a size where that isn't possible, you have to implement and enforce process in order to make sure that those who don't have that skill can be effective at their jobs.

But why did the team need to grow to that size if they were highly effective before that? Doesn't the growth and the adoption of those that don't have the skill handicap everyone else?

I've seen quite a few teams kneecap themselves this way by essentially hiring and growing: the team would've been, net-output-wise, more effective staying as a small team and not hiring.

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

#178

Post by jimnotgym »

Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #157
hef19898 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hero worshippong always puzzles me. All real world examples, from certified sport super stars to actual rock stars, show us that the proverbial employee rockstar is a myth. No Messi, Ronaldo or Mbappé can win a Championship or the Champions League on their own. Nor can Brady win the Super Bowl without a team. Every rockstar has a team of song writers (there are exceptions to that so), producers, marketing and to…

Saying "a star can't do it without a team" is very silly. That's like saying "well, sure but Shakespeare couldn't have written anything with a pen". True at some level, but I think we both know in that equation whether the pen or the man was more valuable. The point is that teams are necessary, but in many cases, are easier to come by than stars. Engineering stars do exist. Not all are loose cannons, like in popular…

I thought it was pretty well established that Shakespeare had a team of writers?

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

#179

Post by ayewo »

tacheiordache wrote: post #163
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…

Why are superstars seeking employment in corporations though?

Those outsized salaries [1] are pretty hard to resist once you know you are skilled enough to scale their interview process.

1: https://www.levels.fyi/2023/?level=Principal%20Engineer

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