How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo • Hacker News Board

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#131

Post by Periodic » Thu, Jun 24, 2010, 6:49 PM UTC

mchouza wrote: post #116

Periodic wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a case of misplaced metrics. I can't find the name of the paper or the researcher, but I believe it's been shown that when you try to reward/punish some metric of productivity, invariably the employees will begin to maximize that metric, perhaps at the expense of productivity. Measuring number of hours in the office is not a direct measurement of productivity, and these employees were meeting the metric, but onl…

I believe it's known as Campbell's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_Law

Thank you. That sums it up pretty concisely, though not very precisely.

I wonder if Goodhart's law is more apt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodharts_law

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#132

Post by RyanMcGreal » Thu, Jun 24, 2010, 6:55 PM UTC

gruseom wrote: post #128

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say "don't bother". The very act of measuring changes employees' focus from getting the job done to gaming the system. The more that management focuses on the metrics, the more that people are driven to secondary and even tertiary efforts to look productive, rather than spending their energy just doing their jobs. It triggers an arms race of workers seeking ways to mask their activities and management building ev…

That confirms my bias, which is that it can't be measured directly and the metrics that people try it with usually do more harm than good. But it's very interesting coming from someone with "years of direct involvement in measuring productivity".

Something akin to productivity measurement isn't completely useless, but it should only ever be used: a) to identify and address systematic problems, as opposed to scrutinizing individual performance; and b) in rare cases to identify extreme outliers - but managers should be aware enough of what their employees are doing to know who those people are already.

Unfortunately, that kind of approach doesn't lend itself to a productivity measurement team seeking a high profile for its activities. Nor does ostensibly objective, non-punitive measurement stay that way - it's just too tempting for managers to use it as a stick.

I've been working on different projects for the past couple of years, and frankly I'm glad to be out of the productivity game.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#133

Post by RyanMcGreal » Thu, Jun 24, 2010, 6:56 PM UTC

caffeine wrote: post #129

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I believe it's been shown that when you try to reward/punish some metric of productivity, invariably the employees will begin to maximize that metric, perhaps at the expense of productivity. After years of direct involvement in measuring productivity, I would accept that as a general axiom. I've likened it to badly applied wallpaper: push down a bubble and it just pops up somewhere else.

Even if the metric is a direct business metric that it's manaagement's job to optimize (like profitability or number of users)? I've always thought it would be interesting to see the results if half of everybody's salary (including the CEO and the toner refill guy) was paid by dividends from shares of the company held in trust for this purpose. As in, every year, everyone's pay goes up/down by the same (relative) amo…

Dan Pink would suggest that if you're trying to drive performance by tweaking monetary incentives, you're doing it wrong. http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#134

Post by VBprogrammer » Thu, Jun 24, 2010, 10:26 PM UTC

ido wrote: post #119

neeleshs wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not seen a software project where there is not enough work for somebody. What I've found useful, and which worked reasonably well for teams which have been working over a period of time together is to collectively estimate complexity of tasks that must be completed.Say on a scale of 1-5. That gives you a reasonably agreeable scale of measurement (not a universal scale, but the one that the team accepts). As ti…

Sounds pretty decent, although there is still the problem that it doesn't tell you if someone is slacking off or is simply not very fast.

Nor does it tell you anything about the quality of the work produced. Sometimes a job half done is worse than a job never started!

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#135

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 25, 2010, 10:44 PM UTC

caffeine wrote: post #129

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I believe it's been shown that when you try to reward/punish some metric of productivity, invariably the employees will begin to maximize that metric, perhaps at the expense of productivity. After years of direct involvement in measuring productivity, I would accept that as a general axiom. I've likened it to badly applied wallpaper: push down a bubble and it just pops up somewhere else.

Even if the metric is a direct business metric that it's manaagement's job to optimize (like profitability or number of users)? I've always thought it would be interesting to see the results if half of everybody's salary (including the CEO and the toner refill guy) was paid by dividends from shares of the company held in trust for this purpose. As in, every year, everyone's pay goes up/down by the same (relative) amo…

[deleted]