"We should focus on what people get done, not how many hours or days are worked. Just as we don’t have a 9-5 day policy, we don’t need a vacation policy." While I admire the sentiment, it's rather anti-family.
Can you elaborate?
The Tyranny of Process Worship Within IT
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Re: The Tyranny of Process Worship Within IT
#12I think we need to create an approval process for processes so that we can slow down the creation of processes.
Was that comment approved????
Re: The Tyranny of Process Worship Within IT
#13"We should focus on what people get done, not how many hours or days are worked. Just as we don’t have a 9-5 day policy, we don’t need a vacation policy." While I admire the sentiment, it's rather anti-family.
Can you elaborate?
That sort of policy encourages people to work very long hours to out-compete their coworkers. And don't tell me that there is no competition working for a place where adequate work is rewarded with a "generous severance package."
You pay for that sort of thing long term with burnt out employees and broken families.
Vacation and the 9 to 5 policy encourages people to compete with each other without going overboard and ruining their lives. Whether that's good or bad for you, their employer, is something that you need to consider.
Re: The Tyranny of Process Worship Within IT
#14I think a distinction needs to be made between actual process and codified process. The former always exists, and the only question is whether it is working or not. The latter is endemic to large organizations with disaffected and mediocre management and employees, which is what Netflix is actively fighting against. However the tone of this piece and the original Netflix manifesto does not acknowledge this distinctio…
Codified process help to increase efficiency by remembering the best way you solved the same problem before. This is extremely useful when you are repeating problems, but it stands in the way when you keep doing new things. The real question is not process and group productivity vs individual productivity, but how fluid your problems are.
When a random customer calls the help desk ask "Is it plugged in?" aka say "Please unplug it wait 5 seconds and then plug it back in."
When the head of R&D calls ask "How can I be of assistance?"
Re: The Tyranny of Process Worship Within IT
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate?
That sort of policy encourages people to work very long hours to out-compete their coworkers. And don't tell me that there is no competition working for a place where adequate work is rewarded with a "generous severance package." You pay for that sort of thing long term with burnt out employees and broken families. Vacation and the 9 to 5 policy encourages people to compete with each other without going overboard and…
We have a similar policy where I work. There are certainly people who work harder, or who take less vacation than they would like. But from what I've seen, most of these people are either workaholics, or underperformers who probably shouldn't be working here anyway. I suspect most of these people would be working long hours regardless of the work hours or vacation policy.
For the rest of us, the freedom is tremendously valuable, and we have fantastic work-life balance.
Re: The Tyranny of Process Worship Within IT
#16I think a distinction needs to be made between actual process and codified process. The former always exists, and the only question is whether it is working or not. The latter is endemic to large organizations with disaffected and mediocre management and employees, which is what Netflix is actively fighting against. However the tone of this piece and the original Netflix manifesto does not acknowledge this distinctio…
Thanks for the comments. I should have made a better distinction between actual and codified process. My thoughts were toward codified, which, as you state, are endemic in larger organizations, and seem to build on themselves over the years, good and bad, until less and less actual progress toward the ultimate goals of the organization is accomplished. Process is delivered, rather than products...
Although I did not agree with everything in the Netflix deck, I was impressed by the "bias" toward great people rather than great process, which seems to me, to be a fresh take on it. There will always be necessary processes and there are certainly many great process best practices to draw from, but I do think we should all be CONSTANTLY QUESTIONING what is in place, asking ourselves if it is serving us or we serving it, and making changes as needed. It is my experience that this happens rarely in large organizations. There simply isn't the political will to take it on...
Re: The Tyranny of Process Worship Within IT
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Common focus is one thing; changes should be driven by a concrete external goal that is shared by all parties. You don't push code because it's Thursday, you push code because it's got new feature X that matters to client Y. A culture of humility is also important; Ops/IT people build walls of process when developers chew them out for mistakes, which only gets worse when a chunk of those mistakes (but not all) end up…
Agree with everything you say here, thanks
Re: The Tyranny of Process Worship Within IT
#18I think a distinction needs to be made between actual process and codified process. The former always exists, and the only question is whether it is working or not. The latter is endemic to large organizations with disaffected and mediocre management and employees, which is what Netflix is actively fighting against. However the tone of this piece and the original Netflix manifesto does not acknowledge this distinctio…
Thanks for the comments. I should have made a better distinction between actual and codified process. My thoughts were toward codified, which, as you state, are endemic in larger organizations, and seem to build on themselves over the years, good and bad, until less and less actual progress toward the ultimate goals of the organization is accomplished. Process is delivered, rather than products... Although I did not…
In the corporate world it's definitely a fresh take, and that alone is worth a lot.
Re: The Tyranny of Process Worship Within IT
#19There is only one process in IT which I worship:
USER PID COMMAND
root 1 /sbin/initRe: The Tyranny of Process Worship Within IT
#20There is only one process in IT which I worship: USER PID COMMAND root 1 /sbin/init
excellent t-shirt idea