51–60 of 63 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The organizational / social capital starts decreasing and then a few quarters later people see the costs of not having enough organizational capital. Boom/bust.
Management monopolizing organizational / social capital is itself a sign of a fairly unhealthy organization. So you might get a couple quarters of pain but then you'll end up with a better long term organization.
A number of corporations are going to learn hard lessons from indiscriminate cutting of middle management, like when Google thought they were being innovative in not having much management a long time ago.
Internally, we're adrift. If everyone is in charge, nobody is. And the CEO didn't think about how yearly reviews or promotions were going to work without managers to read or write them.
Remember that about 3-4 years ago, we experienced the Great Migration. The percentage of tech workers who moved to new companies was very high compared with historical migration patterns. Interests rates were still very low, companies had been buoyed by pandemic-related assistance, and inflation hadn't yet set in, so the salaries that were being offered were very attractive. In the years since, the incentives to leav…
I have three appointments, one at a software company, one at the university as a research scientist, and one at a university I am visiting.
At the company we have an open office plan. Most people don’t have assigned desks and often time people are working with customers. However we have a core r&d group but because it’s all open office basically everyone does their own thing because it’s disrupting to talk. Therefore I go to the office when I want to have lunch with colleagues but that’s about it. Nobody much complains about this arrangement because most everyone is working at the customers and those in the office are not typically there every day. Also the company pays for home office setup so everyone is happy to work from home some days.
At the university I’m visiting everyone, professors included, are crammed into tiny offices that are shared. Nobody has their own office. Nobody is even allowed to have their own white board you must share it with office mates and it must be regulation size with is only one meter wide. I was even told that the white board should only be used in collaboration that if I was using it for myself I should better use paper at my desk. You are not allowed to move or rearrange the office in any way. There is an industrial coffee machine that logs which coffee you take and reports through its 5g enabled internal computer. So far this coffee remains free. The management often complains about how people are not allowed to work from home yet there is only shared meeting space which can only be used if it’s booked through the online system and often it’s all booked. Even though the building seems busy with people most prefer to work from home or a coffee shop.
At the university I am a research scientist at I have my own office. It has a couch and a giant white board for discussing projects with phds and postdocs. There’s room for my textbooks and I have lots of desk space. When I work there it seems as if I’m working at 10x speed compared to anywhere else because all my resources are right there. There is a nice espresso machine, there is a nice culture of lunches and there’s a research centre lunch space. Everyone in the Research centre seems to show up to work every day and often seem happy to be there. Is rare that people work from home and often times even if there is crunch time they simply close their office door.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that it is possible that people would like to work from an office if that office was a nice place to be. It’s also possible that work from home is a great solution for lots of people. But I think that a great many people experience an office space that is onerous. And so given the option they would prefer to never be there.
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Middle management gets a bad rap but that political battleground makes or break companies.
Exactly. Not having political battlegrounds makes companies better. Whereas, it sounds like you're saying having people to fight in the battleground is the goal.
Like there is a dispersion process of responsibility of the actual business as you go up the chain so if you have enough layers you can basically free roll as an upper manager with taking credit for the good outcomes while the bad was just shitty middle management.
It is an investment by upper manager to free roll.
Remember that about 3-4 years ago, we experienced the Great Migration. The percentage of tech workers who moved to new companies was very high compared with historical migration patterns. Interests rates were still very low, companies had been buoyed by pandemic-related assistance, and inflation hadn't yet set in, so the salaries that were being offered were very attractive. In the years since, the incentives to leav…
With regards to wfh, I’m of the opinion that a large amount of why wfh is nice is because the office now sucks. I am an academic scientist but let me offer my perspective. I have three appointments, one at a software company, one at the university as a research scientist, and one at a university I am visiting. At the company we have an open office plan. Most people don’t have assigned desks and often time people are…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually my manager was "demoted" back to a programmer, which I think is a good thing. He was forced onto management a few years ago, but that was a waste of talent in my opinion. I also think a lot of stress he suffered as a manager is gone. But yes, a lot of people were let go at the same time (8 months ago). And the article, no useful information from what I can see.
One of the big things that keeps me where I'm working now is the org structure that keeps managers & non-managers on separate career tracks until significantly higher in the org chart than most big companies. Moving between manager & not isn't a promotion or demotion; it's a sideways shift.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With regards to wfh, I’m of the opinion that a large amount of why wfh is nice is because the office now sucks. I am an academic scientist but let me offer my perspective. I have three appointments, one at a software company, one at the university as a research scientist, and one at a university I am visiting. At the company we have an open office plan. Most people don’t have assigned desks and often time people are…
Just FYI, none of this is new - offices have been that way for most of the 21st century.
And there we have it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Middle management gets a bad rap but that political battleground makes or break companies.
Exactly. Not having political battlegrounds makes companies better. Whereas, it sounds like you're saying having people to fight in the battleground is the goal.