Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Most HR data is bad data (2015)

hbr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 53 posts

Re: Most HR data is bad data (2015)

#41

Post by drewcoo »

willcipriano wrote: post #34
milesvp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is that the best devs should not be crushing tickets. Just like the best surgeons have some of the worst survival rates, because they get the hardest patients, the best engineers should be working on the hardest problems the team faces. They should be spending a lot more time doing research, de-risking and clearing the way so that the rest of the team can crush the tickets.

Not just tickets. Lines of code (not just in main but in branches), deployments, runs of the automated build/test suite, lines of documentation written, number of responses in your company technical emergency slack channel, after hours pager incidents resolved, etc, etc If the people near the top of those leader boards are near the top of the comp leaderboard your job is done as that makes sense by the numbers, if no…

These things are vanity metrics.

> Lines of code (not just in main but in branches)

IMO, the best devs can end up with negative LOCs per measurement period. Neophytes will never have negative LOCs. Mediocre devs who copy and paste a lot can have really high LOCs.

> lines of documentation written

And the more documentation you have the more out of sync it is with reality.

Re: Most HR data is bad data (2015)

#42

Post by drewcoo »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #18
neilv wrote: post #13

How about minimize how much anyone gets rated, and try to hire for, and structure incentives for, people motivated by: * success of the company, * success/happiness of the team, and * societally beneficial service (I assume this works best if your company also genuinely has those values. But if it does, no sense using the disproven methodology of sociopathic companies.)

If engineers are motivated by the success of the company, you get a Boeing situation, where company is doing well and planes are bad. Happiness of the team ... the guy bringing tequila shots and cupcakes to the office will be rated the best (we had a colleague that was baking cupcakes weekly, very popular, but not contributing otherwise to the company's success). Societal service? All companies are doing it, in some…

The Boeing decline was brought about by the bean-counters and their quarterly goals, not by the dedicated engineers working on years-long projects who built the company.

Re: Most HR data is bad data (2015)

#43

Post by pyuser583 »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #17
zachmu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People making lots of soft contributions like mentorship / leadership tend to be the kind of well-liked personable sorts who do well on non-objective assessments, which always manage to color evaluations even when you try to make them as objective as possible.

Not in my experience. I worked in 2 occasions with some older people (~ 65) that were the guru of their departments, very respected and listened. While people learned a lot from these 2 people, they were not too agreeable, but quite grumpy, I could say. That limited their careers, even if they were by far the best experts in their departments and overall the most valuable contributors, they were never considered for…

I wonder if something about technical competence corresponds to being a jerk.

I’ve seen this happen again and again. Nice people become jerks when they become good at tech.

It doesn’t always happen. Plenty of compassionate tech wizards.

I suspect it’s due to the fact that being a jerk gets reactions quicker. “You messed this up, fix it like I tell you or I’ll ruin your reputation” gets more effect than “Let me show you how this works.”

I also suspect that programmers are often so lost in their heads, they don’t take good advice when it’s given.

I’ve been guilty of this. I’ve decided a problem is from X part of the stack, that when an expert in Y says to look in Y I’m like “but that doesn’t effect X!”

Re: Most HR data is bad data (2015)

#44

Post by drewcoo »

throwway120385 wrote: post #5

The author seems keenly unaware that all of this fake rigor in HR exists primarily so the company can say they have a process that is objective. This is not the same thing as actually having a process that's objective. More to the point, objectivity may not actually matter much because so much of how a team performs is down to how individuals within the team gel, and you can't train someone into having a personality…

This.

HR defends the company against legal attacks from outsiders and employees alike.

Not all people working in HR have this as a prime motivation, but that's why HR exists.

Re: Most HR data is bad data (2015)

#45

Post by willcipriano »

drewcoo wrote: post #41
willcipriano wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just tickets. Lines of code (not just in main but in branches), deployments, runs of the automated build/test suite, lines of documentation written, number of responses in your company technical emergency slack channel, after hours pager incidents resolved, etc, etc If the people near the top of those leader boards are near the top of the comp leaderboard your job is done as that makes sense by the numbers, if no…

These things are vanity metrics. > Lines of code (not just in main but in branches) IMO, the best devs can end up with negative LOCs per measurement period. Neophytes will never have negative LOCs. Mediocre devs who copy and paste a lot can have really high LOCs. > lines of documentation written And the more documentation you have the more out of sync it is with reality.

The people who would be confused by these metrics in the way you describe aren't going to do any better without them.

Re: Most HR data is bad data (2015)

#46

Post by neilv »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #18
neilv wrote: post #13

How about minimize how much anyone gets rated, and try to hire for, and structure incentives for, people motivated by: * success of the company, * success/happiness of the team, and * societally beneficial service (I assume this works best if your company also genuinely has those values. But if it does, no sense using the disproven methodology of sociopathic companies.)

If engineers are motivated by the success of the company, you get a Boeing situation, where company is doing well and planes are bad. Happiness of the team ... the guy bringing tequila shots and cupcakes to the office will be rated the best (we had a colleague that was baking cupcakes weekly, very popular, but not contributing otherwise to the company's success). Societal service? All companies are doing it, in some…

Success of the team, like getting the next funding round, making the stock worth more, etc.

Success and happiness of the team, like cooperating to help other people's work go well, not being seen as a slacker or incompetent, etc.

Societally beneficial, like doing things that are obviously good for society (e.g., improving health) and not doing things that are bad (e.g., investment scams, surveillance capitalism).

Re: Most HR data is bad data (2015)

#47

Post by zachmu »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #17
zachmu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People making lots of soft contributions like mentorship / leadership tend to be the kind of well-liked personable sorts who do well on non-objective assessments, which always manage to color evaluations even when you try to make them as objective as possible.

Not in my experience. I worked in 2 occasions with some older people (~ 65) that were the guru of their departments, very respected and listened. While people learned a lot from these 2 people, they were not too agreeable, but quite grumpy, I could say. That limited their careers, even if they were by far the best experts in their departments and overall the most valuable contributors, they were never considered for…

Being an old grumpy guru is somewhat different from being a mentor, we're talking about different things.

Re: Most HR data is bad data (2015)

#48

Post by dzdt »

The article is talking about ratings for existing employees, but everything said applies equally well to interview scores for potential employees. If you have candidates being scored by different interviewers, more of the variation is due to the interviewers than the candidates.

Re: Most HR data is bad data (2015)

#49

Post by AdrianB1 »

pyuser583 wrote: post #43
AdrianB1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in my experience. I worked in 2 occasions with some older people (~ 65) that were the guru of their departments, very respected and listened. While people learned a lot from these 2 people, they were not too agreeable, but quite grumpy, I could say. That limited their careers, even if they were by far the best experts in their departments and overall the most valuable contributors, they were never considered for…

I wonder if something about technical competence corresponds to being a jerk. I’ve seen this happen again and again. Nice people become jerks when they become good at tech. It doesn’t always happen. Plenty of compassionate tech wizards. I suspect it’s due to the fact that being a jerk gets reactions quicker. “You messed this up, fix it like I tell you or I’ll ruin your reputation” gets more effect than “Let me show y…

What I saw first hand: when someone really good is trying to help others there are usually 2 ways this can happen:

- they try their best, they need help, they ask for help, they get it

- they don't put any effort, they go to the expert with the most idiotic questions waiting for solutions to be served. The expert runs out of patience, becomes grumpy with these people

So the experts are not jerks. They are short on patience with super-lazy, super-incompetent people that waste their time.

Post reply on HN