131–140 of 168 posts
So what's a better way to do it? You need a documented system. If you don't have a documented system then there will be an undocumented system which is the same problem with less documentation.
Here's a question to which most people experience revulsion, but must be thought of and answered honestly: Why not give everyone the same bonus based on company performance? Make it collective good. You'll probably think of reasons, like "good people should be rewarded," or "people who do things wrong need to have consequences," but you must realize the alternative is this vile demotivational anti-pattern with even w…
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You've just described not one, but two bad managers. Steve's manager, who doesn't have what it takes to make the hard decisions and is to lazy to do job interviews, and the manager of Steve's manager, who won't let him get a replacement if he fires Steve, but is perfectly willing to keep paying for Steve. Now you can defend Steve's manager because he's nice to Steve, but if I had a dime for every employee who's pisse…
You call someone a bad manager because they are friends with their subordinates? So you'd only hire psychopaths? That seems fraught with peril. To be more explicit: calling a human a bad manager for liking people is like calling a tree a bad tree for growing toward the sun. Humans are designed by evolution to like each other. The only humans that don't have this bias are broken ones. So I refuse to consider someone a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've just described not one, but two bad managers. Steve's manager, who doesn't have what it takes to make the hard decisions and is to lazy to do job interviews, and the manager of Steve's manager, who won't let him get a replacement if he fires Steve, but is perfectly willing to keep paying for Steve. Now you can defend Steve's manager because he's nice to Steve, but if I had a dime for every employee who's pisse…
You call someone a bad manager because they are friends with their subordinates? So you'd only hire psychopaths? That seems fraught with peril. To be more explicit: calling a human a bad manager for liking people is like calling a tree a bad tree for growing toward the sun. Humans are designed by evolution to like each other. The only humans that don't have this bias are broken ones. So I refuse to consider someone a…
I don't know how to square this circle. I'm not sure it can be done.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've just described not one, but two bad managers. Steve's manager, who doesn't have what it takes to make the hard decisions and is to lazy to do job interviews, and the manager of Steve's manager, who won't let him get a replacement if he fires Steve, but is perfectly willing to keep paying for Steve. Now you can defend Steve's manager because he's nice to Steve, but if I had a dime for every employee who's pisse…
but if I had a dime for every employee who's pissed at their manager for not ditching the underperformer that's dragging the team down I would be rich. I've worked places where every person would swear a different person was that person. This stuff is hard, We've had corporations in the modern form for nearly a 100 years and we still havent reached a general solution which implies either everyone is an idiot or this…
I think we need to chalk this up as a Red Queen problem and stop wishing for the One True Solution.
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How does open allocation address performance evaluation/compensation? Doesn't Valve have both open allocation and stack ranking?
Valve does stack ranking == compensation and they very much have a hirachy, it's just not documented. It's called the Tyranny of Structurelessness: http://beautifultrouble.org/principle/beware-the-tyranny-of-...
From the same article is a very appropriate quote: "Structurelessness is often mistakenly conflated with absence of hierarchy, when in fact, effective non-hierarchical forms of organizing actually require a great deal of structure. Anyone who has participated in an effectively facilitated general assembly or spokescouncil meeting will well understand this distinction."
Why do these companies have Microsoft-style stack-ranking systems? Because many engineers are pussies who don't fight for themselves. Imagine if that stack-ranking nonsense were done to a law firm. (Law firms have a very civilized way of managing people out into external promotions if they, after ~6 years, obviously aren't going to make partner. Google "Cravath model".) There'd be lawsuits galore. Attorneys would sta…
Here's a question to which most people experience revulsion, but must be thought of and answered honestly: Why not give everyone the same bonus based on company performance? Make it collective good. You'll probably think of reasons, like "good people should be rewarded," or "people who do things wrong need to have consequences," but you must realize the alternative is this vile demotivational anti-pattern with even w…
> Why not give everyone the same bonus based on company performance? Make it collective good. I wholeheartedly agree. Apart from niche examples, like measuring sale people on sales, there is no good reliable way to measure employees based on performance/outputs. IO Psychologists have been looking at this for years and even mathematicians (like Leonard Mlodinow in The Drunkard's Walk) agree.
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How does open allocation address performance evaluation/compensation? Doesn't Valve have both open allocation and stack ranking?
Review (and compensate based on) impact rather than "performance", the latter carrying connotations of personal assessment rather than objective contribution. Low impact doesn't mean you're a "low performer" or bad person, just that you didn't have any major successes that year. You'd fire over low impact if someone clearly didn't care, but not if they were just unlucky/ill-mentored/mistaken in choosing what efforts…
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I am currently reading a bunch of the Toyota Way books, Deming, etc. and sometimes I wonder if one of the most basic assumptions in the West is that the individual is the root and the system is a derived thing. This assumption starts, maybe, with Christianity which tells us that we stand alone before God judged on our individual character, not on our wealth or social position. Buddhism, on the other hand, tells us th…
This is a really interesting observation, and one I've thought about before. I've noticed that companies tend to fall into two philosophical camps, both of which can be successful if executed right. One camp says that you should create a great process so that you can stick anyone in it and they can be successful. Another camp says you should get great people and the process will work itself out. I'm illustrating the…
The same can be said of politics, but extreme ideologies exist still.