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When employees feel slighted, they work less

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Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#141

Post by nullorempty »

At a company I work for we get b-day cards promptly. They all get sent by workday :) What I found upsets me the most is companies paying no respect to my private time.

They all want me to be on-call and carry my laptop with me. Hiking, on a beach, at a restaurant, sleeping at night – i am expected to be reachable and get on it right away.

Some international companies don't even try to schedule support according to time-zone sighting on-call efficiency and knowledge segregation.

And yet, they fücking refuse every effort developers make to focus on fixing issues leading to incidents.

They fücking need to fix their act.

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#142

Post by njhnjhnjh »

SkyeCA wrote: post #128
sudonem wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that many organizations literally refer to their employees as “Resource Units” literally abstracting away their humanity I’m going to say… yes. We are at that point (and have been for quite some time).

There are few things that make me irrationally seethe like being called a resource. I understand why they do it, I even accept that I'm nothing more than a resource to them, but it really isn't a big ask for them to refer to us as humans when speaking directly to us.

[flagged]

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#143

Post by njhnjhnjh »

pinnochio wrote: post #38
tarkin2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have we got to the point where we need an article telling us that slighting people doesn't help their motivation? Perhaps the answer is yes when we also compare a worker's motivation to a dog's motivation seemingly without irony.

Having a documented effect and effect size puts this in terms that can change manager behavior, even a somewhat callous one, because they can see how it affects their own professional goals. Btw, the comparison was between the dog and manager, and about the association of cause and effect. Maybe you should try to read more carefully and charitably in the future.

[flagged]

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#144

Post by andsoitis »

SkyeCA wrote: post #122
andsoitis wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> late birthday recognition. if someone is going to feel slighted and similar things add up to them working less, they probably are not a great colleague to begin with. What matters more are: assignment to rewarding work, get paid top dollar, not be bored, get recognition for success, coaching on career growth, given leeway to make mistakes, not overlooked for promotion, etc. Now, as a people manager, if you're not s…

People are emotional and react in unexpected ways to even the smallest perceived slights, myself included. A late birthday recognition might not feel important, but if one already feels like management doesn't care about them? I can easily seeing that as a confirmation of it that causes resentment. I can also see it doing the same for any number of management related issues. I can tell you personally that the action…

> being denied a bereavement day because the official policy was to only allow one

I think when setting up policy like this you have two choices:

a) have a fixed number of days --> fair, objective

b) allow it to the manager to use their judgement --> variance across company

The former has the tradeoff that you experienced.

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#145

Post by darth_avocado »

Sharlin wrote: post #111
andsoitis wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> late birthday recognition. if someone is going to feel slighted and similar things add up to them working less, they probably are not a great colleague to begin with. What matters more are: assignment to rewarding work, get paid top dollar, not be bored, get recognition for success, coaching on career growth, given leeway to make mistakes, not overlooked for promotion, etc. Now, as a people manager, if you're not s…

Being primarily interested in money and career advancement would also make you not a great colleague in many people’s eyes. It’s rather subjective.

Whether people like to admit it or not, very rarely do people work for anything but money and career advancement. You can claim you work for passion, the love of the game or whatever 100 other reasons people tend to give out. All it takes is 2 years of no raises and a couple of promotions for colleagues for you to start not wanting to work for whatever reason you convinced yourself you were working for.

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#146

Post by paradox460 »

diogenescynic wrote: post #81

I just got my annual review and for the 4th year in a row, no changes. I'm still "meeting expectations" but apparently not deserving of even a crumb of the millions in additional profits I've brought in. I am damn sure not going to work as hard going forward when working hard doesn't even lead to a positive outcome. I may not control the scope or even volume of work assigned to me, but I do control the pace and why b…

At a past company, we originally had a fairly flat org structure. Jr, Mid, Sr, for the ICs. It worked, and everyone was happy. Eventually they brought in some new leadership from one of the big tech companies, and the new leadership brought a levels system. Suddenly we went from a large and flat org, to having all sorts of letters and numbers for levels. And none of the existing staff was promoted to the new levels, they just got moved to the equivalent, while the new leadership hired their own people to the higher eschelons. This already damaged morale, because you had new E6 and E7 or whatever engineers who didn't know their way around the codebase at all, while an E2 or E3 was having to do everything.

Eventually they promoted a few of the original engineering staff. I was told during one of these promotions cycles that I just barely missed the promotion targets. I asked for concrete metrics of what I could improve on, and was given a few vague and nebulous answers. I worked on these, even though they lacked definition. Come the next promotion cycle, I was, once again, passed up. When asked for clarification, I received more vague, nebulous answers. I was assured that I was going to get it the next round, and they'd be doing promotion cycles more than annually.

They kind of kept their word: promotions cycles started happening every 6 months. But the next cycle came through, and once again I was left behind. So this time, instead of asking for clarification, I just started looking for a new job, and handed in a letter of resignation a few weeks later. Upon handing in the letter, I was told "oh we were going to promote you next week!"

I wasn't born yesterday, so I told them thanks but no thanks.

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#147

Post by diogenescynic »

paradox460 wrote: post #146
diogenescynic wrote: post #81

I just got my annual review and for the 4th year in a row, no changes. I'm still "meeting expectations" but apparently not deserving of even a crumb of the millions in additional profits I've brought in. I am damn sure not going to work as hard going forward when working hard doesn't even lead to a positive outcome. I may not control the scope or even volume of work assigned to me, but I do control the pace and why b…

At a past company, we originally had a fairly flat org structure. Jr, Mid, Sr, for the ICs. It worked, and everyone was happy. Eventually they brought in some new leadership from one of the big tech companies, and the new leadership brought a levels system. Suddenly we went from a large and flat org, to having all sorts of letters and numbers for levels. And none of the existing staff was promoted to the new levels,…

>At a past company, we originally had a fairly flat org structure. Jr, Mid, Sr, for the ICs. It worked, and everyone was happy. Eventually they brought in some new leadership from one of the big tech companies, and the new leadership brought a levels system. Suddenly we went from a large and flat org, to having all sorts of letters and numbers for levels. And none of the existing staff was promoted to the new levels, they just got moved to the equivalent, while the new leadership hired their own people to the higher eschelons. This already damaged morale, because you had new E6 and E7 or whatever engineers who didn't know their way around the codebase at all, while an E2 or E3 was having to do everything.

This is exactly what has happened. I've had 6 different reporting structures in the 6 years I've worked there. So much leadership change and more levels to the pyramid added. I was promoted the first/only time after my first year and a half--for something that has scaled exponentially since then and I still manage individually despite other teams who co-manage the system being given 8 more employees.

>They kind of kept their word: promotions cycles started happening every 6 months. But the next cycle came through, and once again I was left behind. So this time, instead of asking for clarification, I just started looking for a new job, and handed in a letter of resignation a few weeks later. Upon handing in the letter, I was told "oh we were going to promote you next week!"

Yep, I was part of the original 3 on the team. Only one has been promoted, the other left, and I am still in the same position. Even though the promo cycle has been increased, it's no different. I am 95% sure that my manager didn't even read my self-evaluation because he specifically asked for more metrics and that's what the first bullet point of my self-evaluation had.

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#148

Post by nuancebydefault »

pessimizer wrote: post #127
nuancebydefault wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> see the employee-manager relationship as adversarial by default. I don't see how anyone can be happy in their job if that were the default. Maybe I am naive or lucky, but I have a very goed relation with my boss, as well as with the boss above. When that condition is not fulfilled, i definitely tend to slack off and I will eventually leave. I believe such should be the default.

I'm happy buying groceries at the grocery store without having to pretend that the checkout clerk loves me. I also feel that the emotional attachment to one's source of income could cause people to compromise their morality for them, as if they were family e.g. I don't think one child should be favored over another, but I'm happy when my child is favored over others. > I believe such should be the default. It's delus…

Maybe my knowledge of the English language is subpar but what you describe looks more like _transactional_?

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#149

Post by catlifeonmars »

margalabargala wrote: post #140
catlifeonmars wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relationship between owners and workers has always been extractive. The adversarial relationship is built in. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have a good relationship with your employer, but there is always a conflict of interest, so to speak. I’ve had great relationships with my bosses, but they’re always under pressure to extract more work from the workers. In turn, their bosses are also pressured to do the sa…

This is an oversimplificstion. The relationship between the person holding the scarce resource, and the person holding the common resource, has always been adversarial. As labor becomes more skilled and less common this dynamic changes.

I’m looking at the status quo. Which still puts vastly more negotiating power in the hands owners of capital in most economies today. I agree it’s an oversimplification and there are some markets where this is not the case.

If I consider my experience it’s clearly still in the minority, so I still consider myself fortunate.

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#150

Post by nasmorn »

andsoitis wrote: post #144
SkyeCA wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are emotional and react in unexpected ways to even the smallest perceived slights, myself included. A late birthday recognition might not feel important, but if one already feels like management doesn't care about them? I can easily seeing that as a confirmation of it that causes resentment. I can also see it doing the same for any number of management related issues. I can tell you personally that the action…

> being denied a bereavement day because the official policy was to only allow one I think when setting up policy like this you have two choices: a) have a fixed number of days --> fair, objective b) allow it to the manager to use their judgement --> variance across company The former has the tradeoff that you experienced.

You could also give people an additional unpaid day off if they ask for it. The good thing about bereavement days is that people don’t tend to abuse the policy much given they would have to kill someone first. Dead grannies are only allowed to make you sad for 72 hours sharp, is a bit of a harsh rule if executed without leeway
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