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At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

bloomberg.com

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Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#191

Post by flashyfaffe2 »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #115
holidayacct wrote: post #76

Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred mil…

> Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem I want to start off by saying that I don't completely disagree with you, but all of us should take a step back and realize how an absurd of a position this is for us to be in a society. This immeasurability is inversely proportional to the tangible, real value created. You can, for example, absolutely measure to the dollar the producti…

"This immeasurability is inversely proportional to the tangible, real value created".

Although I understand your view,Financial sector and banks in particular is a very regulated sector which means that significant number of people working there have their job almost entirely related to making sure the company comply with the rules from the different jurisdictions. From your perspective, they do add no value to the company ( actually there are cost center) but are crucial to ensure company can operate legally. To add an additional layer of complexity, new rules from different countries, authorities, committees are updated/ amended quite regularly ( last one is the LIBOR demise which will have a huge impact on the market where no clear rules,have acknowledged nor agreed). So even you would try to quantify those costs ( legal issue with new rules implementation which lead to update the system or create one from scratch while making sure this will comply with internal task,etc...), it is quite difficult to assess what is the optimal allocation the company needs to allocate. As an illustrative example, it took 2 years to validate some components of the google cloud features (some are still pending) because of all the intetnal rules set out.

More globally, yes there are people adding no value to the company but the can be hardly spot on from top management view.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#193

Post by FpUser »

Without giving even the slightest idea on what productivity and how did they measure it I would say it is just plain propaganda from managers discovering that some of them (maybe a good lot) are becoming redundant.

As for learning things - there is insane amount of knowledge online and if one is unable to use it they have bigger problems than being/or not in the office.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#194

Post by GeoAtreides »

bsder wrote: post #176
andreilys wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The review process is a complete sham. If you honestly believe it’s a measure of your productivity and not a post-hoc rationalization based on a restricted promo and bonus pool I have a bridge to sell you. Most managers will think an employee who spends 10 hours working and 30 hours schmoozing/promoting their work is more productive than someone who spends 60 hours grinding the tasks given to them.

> The review process is a complete sham. It's a complete sham--up until the moment it's about to fire you. Yeah, I've been in the "Look, that deadline is HARD . If you don't figure out how to do something useful by it, the whole GROUP , including me and you, are fired. So, are you gonna figure something out or should I fire you now and get someone else?" That can wake you up, reeeaaaal quick. > Most managers will thi…

>"Look, that deadline is HARD. If you don't figure out how to do something useful by it, the whole GROUP, including me and you, are fired. So, are you gonna figure something out or should I fire you now and get someone else?"

The only sane reply is: "You can't fire me, I quit". First of all, this working env is toxic. I don't need this kind of stress and I can freely quit because I have life savings, like any other sane person. Second, now that deadline becomes impossible without me, not merely hard, good luck to the rest of the team. Third, I might not quit if you apologise right now.

But then again, I'm in Europe, where we have more rights than the Americans. YMMV.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#195

Post by Kiro »

holidayacct wrote: post #76

Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred mil…

> Employees always figure out how to abuse productivity metrics.

Yes, and working from home makes it even easier. Your post basically says that any measured productivity gain from WFH can't be trusted but I don't understand why it would apply to a measured productivity decrease.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#196

Post by em500 »

gotaran wrote: post #135
golergka wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> living in a cramped space with 3 roommates in SF with no privacy > About $450k all in What.

Haha, well it's the same spot I was living in when I was making $120k + non-liquid RSUs. And since it was rent controlled, I never bothered to move. I'd be paying $3000 more if were to move into a 1BR, and I would rather spend that on travel, dates, and post-tax investments. And anyway, an apartment that's fairly spacious can turn into a congested mess when everyone's WFH. Previously, all of us had tech jobs where we…

So now you're making something like 20k/month post-tax, spending 1.1k/month on rent, and complaining that you don't really like the apartment. Solution sounds pretty obvious to me.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#197

Post by thr0waway2 »

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #183

Are bank employees that work on securities permitted to use common collaboration apps such as Slack? Or are they prevented from doing so to crack down on insider trading etc? If they can't use common collaboration apps you in a remote setting you could see how this could impact their productivity.

You can chat to other people on internal IM apps or on Symphony/Bloomberg to external people. They're all monitored and recorded along with Zoom calls.

My drop in productivity as a trader was mostly due to the fact that despite we were raking in a lot of cash I could just see us barely getting paid at the end of the year so I just made sure our books weren't blowing up and spent most of my time finding a hedge fund job.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#198

Post by sgt101 »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #115
holidayacct wrote: post #76

Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred mil…

> Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem I want to start off by saying that I don't completely disagree with you, but all of us should take a step back and realize how an absurd of a position this is for us to be in a society. This immeasurability is inversely proportional to the tangible, real value created. You can, for example, absolutely measure to the dollar the producti…

There is a big problem in knowing when to measure and what to measure. For example, today my work looks to have similar value to the work of my dog Mr. Biscuits, yet I cost 10x. However, move to tomorrow and it turns out that Mr. Biscuits' code has locked up the cluster and Q3 results are gone. Suddenly I look cheap (I am cheap, but that's a different thing).

Also there is zero agreement on what is good; maintainability, robustness, ease of use -> all subjective at the minute.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#199

Post by sgt101 »

bsder wrote: post #125
holidayacct wrote: post #76

Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred mil…

> Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. I totally disagree. That's the whole point of your manager and reviews. In addition, JPMorgan isn't just programmers. It's a lot of people who talk to people and process paper--a LOT of paper. And they can quite clearly measure how much paper is being processed per person. > Employees always figure out how to abuse productivity metric…

>That's the whole point of your manager and reviews...process paper--a LOT of paper. And they can quite clearly measure how much paper is being processed...the economy is in a complete shambles.

And in one HN comment the whole problem with late stage capitalism is laid bare.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#200

Post by sgt101 »

xwdv wrote: post #112
holidayacct wrote: post #76

Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred mil…

Just because it cannot be measured to a high precision does not mean it can't be measured. People clearly have some sense of when they are and aren't productive.

A subjective sense that fails to account for the productivity of the organization over all or the productivity of the team they are in as a whole.
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