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People leave managers, not companies

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Re: People leave managers, not companies

#111

Post by Spooky23 »

cpfohl wrote: post #53
michaelt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In software engineering, many companies prioritise "getting your work done" (which is admittedly a subjective, hard-to-quantify metric) and consider any metric that contradicts it to be suspect. A person who believes this would say that if according to policy my best employee should work 9am-5pm, but he prefers to work from 7am-3pm and is my best employee, it is the policy not the employee that needs changing. Person…

This. I've literally never held a job that wasn't okay flex time, and I've worked at 4 radically different types of companies as a software engineer over the last 7 years. I'll be honest, I was surprised to read this sorry if environment still existed for programmers

Flex time shouldn't mean that you show up sometime between 8 and 11. You should be at work within some sort of reasonably consistent window barring unforeseen circumstances.

When you let people run wild, you end up with angry people anyway as gold-brickers will always take advantage of the system. Communications and accountability break down as you can never have all parties involved in a matter in the same place or same phone call at the same time. I've worked in places where people get wacky because the guy who supposedly works 6-2 really is around from 8-1.

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#112

Post by FilterSweep »

crdoconnor wrote: post #58
subsubsub wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric? To me being on time is just a very basic low level requirement of being a professional. As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways. Turning up on time is a good way to show your manager that you can be trusted. Edit: Actually, turning up on time may not make your manager trust you more, but turning up late will definitely make them trust you less.

>Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric? The worst metric. That is, unless the "turning up on time" is actually causing a serious and recognizable problem. Then it's the problem that's a problem. >As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways. No it doesn't. If you put the onus on the developer and say "not only do you have to deliver high quality code you have to make me trust that you've deliver…

The dev who showed up at 9:05AM was probably also working on a production issue the night before.

While manager slept.

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#113

Post by paul7986 »

I left my big fat paying job after....

- reported a females colleagues non sexual harassment

- started to be harassed myself by my direct coworker who insisted I use css lint in the strictest mode. When I disagreed with what lint was saying in the strictest mode he sold to management that I don’t know how to code or do my job. From then on I struggled to change their minds even when linking to things like using negative margins is valid.

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#114

Post by thr0w__4w4y »

kbenson wrote: post #110
dominotw wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am this exact situation. I love my manager, simply one of the best i've ever worked with. But he is simply is messenger for poor decisions that are made by couple of incompetent people above him. I am not sure what can be done about incompetent people being promoted to position of power where they make horrendous misinformed decisions. Often its too late before the magnitude of their fuckups is visible, usually the…

> I am not sure what can be done about incompetent people being promoted to position of power where they make horrendous misinformed decisions. A lot of the time this is because of the Peter Principle.[1] There are ways to combat it, though. A friend a Google explained to me that to get around this there, before being promoted you have to take on the responsibilities of the position you are looking to advance to for…

This isn't unique to Google; in fact, every serious tech company I've ever worked at or consulted with has this same policy. It's obvious and makes sense. Does it always work? Unfortunately, no...

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#115

Post by crdoconnor »

dozzie wrote: post #106
crdoconnor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric? The worst metric. That is, unless the "turning up on time" is actually causing a serious and recognizable problem. Then it's the problem that's a problem. >As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways. No it doesn't. If you put the onus on the developer and say "not only do you have to deliver high quality code you have to make me trust that you've deliver…

>> Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric? > The worst metric. Not really. If your job is to be available to others (IT support is a good example), turning up on time is an adequate metric.

That's kind of what I meant when I wrote "unless the "turning up on time" is actually causing a serious and recognizable problem. Then it's that problem that's a problem".

Yes, for IT support type roles I think measuring online availability as one aspect of job performance is legitimate.

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#116

Post by logfromblammo »

dagw wrote: post #64
cpfohl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I've literally never held a job that wasn't okay flex time, and I've worked at 4 radically different types of companies as a software engineer over the last 7 years. I'll be honest, I was surprised to read this sorry if environment still existed for programmers

I think the criteria should be turn up on time when it matters. If there is a staff meeting scheduled at 9.30, don't show up at 9.45. Otherwise I agree that day to day most places shouldn't care

At one workplace, the manager instituted a daily all-hands meeting starting at 8:45 AM. But of course you still have flexible working hours; you just have to show up for this one meeting whose start time can't be changed because there definitely are reasons.

Yes, I was already interviewing at other places when that happened.

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#117

Post by kbenson »

thr0w__4w4y wrote: post #114
kbenson wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not sure what can be done about incompetent people being promoted to position of power where they make horrendous misinformed decisions. A lot of the time this is because of the Peter Principle.[1] There are ways to combat it, though. A friend a Google explained to me that to get around this there, before being promoted you have to take on the responsibilities of the position you are looking to advance to for…

This isn't unique to Google; in fact, every serious tech company I've ever worked at or consulted with has this same policy. It's obvious and makes sense. Does it always work? Unfortunately, no...

Sure, I didn't mean to imply it was, or that it necessarily always worked, it's just the example I have some limited experience with (or really, just hearing a first hand experience of).

I can imagine some downsides right now, such as employee burnout (since there's going to be some extra responsibilities as you attempt to do your old job and a new one at the same time), and the fact that this time perior, while somewhat long, may still not be nearly long enough to accurately gauge how a person will react in many common scenarios in the new position.

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#118

Post by oldsmallcorp »

Not my usual account for obvious reasons, but - I'm on my way out because of the company, not my manager. My current manager is decent, and my previous one was the reason I came to work for this company.

The thing that's driving me out is the company's lack of direction. They talk of innovation, but their actions demonstrate that they're more concerned with maintaining the status quo with incremental improvements to aging products.

I've spent about 70% of my few years here working on new products that never saw the light of day. That's disheartening. Fool me twice... time to go.

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#119

Post by kemiller2002 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #111
cpfohl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I've literally never held a job that wasn't okay flex time, and I've worked at 4 radically different types of companies as a software engineer over the last 7 years. I'll be honest, I was surprised to read this sorry if environment still existed for programmers

Flex time shouldn't mean that you show up sometime between 8 and 11. You should be at work within some sort of reasonably consistent window barring unforeseen circumstances. When you let people run wild, you end up with angry people anyway as gold-brickers will always take advantage of the system. Communications and accountability break down as you can never have all parties involved in a matter in the same place or…

I disagree. I trust my people. We all understand the idea that you get your work done. This gives them the flexibility to do what they need to do for their life. I have one guy that signs off a couple of hours a week during the fall to tend to his home/farm. I have another that takes time to make sure his girlfriend can make it to her Dr. appointment. These are also the people that I see working at midnight or such finishing things, because they realize at 8 p.m. they know how to fix something.

The key for us is communication. We make sure that each of us knows what the other is doing. Sure we have meetings every once in a while that we know we need to all meet, but for the most part we center our communication around ways to make sure that we can leave a message and they can get back to us when they can.

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#120

Post by amyjess »

I have mixed thoughts on this. The one company I quit, I quit in large part because my manager was abusive. A particular tantrum my manager threw was what caused me to apply to several jobs in a fit of pique, and when one of them gave me an offer, I put in my notice. On the other hand, the company was toxic on several levels, the abusive manager was only part of it, and I'd been looking at job postings on and off for months before that incident.

The pay was abysmal. Nobody at the company had any insurance (because of this I will never work for a startup again). Company leadership was willing to roll over for a transphobic landlord and throw me under the bus. The company was a young startup without any infrastructure or processes, and pretty much everybody technical had very little professional experience (including both the technical leadership and the rank-and-file; and I say this even though I ended up becoming friends with several of my fellow rank-and-file, most of whom I still talk to to this day). Somehow I got along well with the CTO, but he was very mercurial and there were some people there (including a couple friends of mine) he took a strong personal dislike to for no real reason, and I was always afraid he would turn on me. I definitely quit the company and not just the manager.

I still keep up with them and their employees on LinkedIn. One thing I've noticed is that since I left, they've been handing out Director titles like candy, I'm assuming to compensate for their lack of monetary compensation.

The company was a disaster on pretty much every level. The one good thing I could say about it was that some of my ex-coworkers there are still friends of mine, but that's a really low bar.

Edit: I want to add another story. The company I ended up jumping ship to, I came close to quitting before they laid me off, for reasons that had nothing to do with my manager. My manager was excellent. I liked him a lot. But the work I was doing had nothing whatsoever to do with my skillset. I felt like an idiot compared to my coworkers, I made far less useful contributions than pretty much anybody else at the company (my boss reassured me that he didn't care because he knew the stuff they did was esoteric and was willing to spend years training someone new), and the longer I stayed the more it felt like it was actually harming my career since I was letting my specialty atrophy (and I still thought this even though I'm not a career-minded person!). Ultimately, that decision got taken out of my hands because 1/3 of the company including me got taken out in the only layoff in the company's 20-year history, but if I did quit it would have been despite my manager being awesome, not because of him.

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