Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

rustyrazorblade.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 75 posts

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#21

Post by api »

beloch wrote: post #8

22. Hire antisocial self-declared "rock star" employees who can't stand other human beings. 23. Encourage sociable, pleasant employees to read Machiavelli and Sun Tzu. 24. Peer reviews and stack ranking! 25. Stress that everything must be done in-house. If your employees want a wheel, they must reinvent it themselves. 26. Play video games in your office during crunch-time or, heck, just take the day off. You deserve…

29. Absentee management. Set no goals and assign nothing, yet give people the vague sense that they are always behind. Combine slack with a sense of foreboding.

30. Advertise a position as advanced and interesting -- quant work, machine learning, GPGPU, distributed systems, etc. -- then hand your new hire a 15 year old heap of stinking web CRUD written in Perl and 1990s-style JavaScript to maintain.

(Both from my own personal experience.)

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#22

Post by lauradhamilton »

com2kid wrote: post #18
amputect wrote: post #10

> 14. Humiliate people in public. If you have to choose only one item from the list, this one is really, shockingly effective and easy to implement. My wife was in tears the other day because she made two trivial, easily-fixable errors on some paperwork she was doing as a stand-in for someone who was out sick. She fixed the errors and resubmitted it when they were brought to her attention, but her boss still sent the…

I am of two minds about this. On one hand, a "you broke the build dunce cap" isn't the worst of ideas. (Although by far I prefer a check-in system that doesn't allow the build to be broken for everyone...) I've been shamed, and semi-publically (within the team) shamed others, for not having written any unit tests before check-in. I'm also a big fan of publically celebrating successes. When a tester writes up a good b…

There is a difference between being shamed for breaking the build because you didn't run the test suite (and well knew that you should run the test suite) and being shamed for making an innocent mistake because you didn't know better.

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#23

Post by loup-vaillant »

dasil003 wrote: post #5

If you have to write this post to vent because you are stuck in a job you can't afford to leave and you are scared you'll be fired if you raise these issues to management, then so be it, write the bloody post and I hope you feel better. However in terms of practical changes, this post can neither benefit you nor anyone else. We all know about broken management cultures that this post describes, but none of those mana…

> I would probably be too nervous to ever hire someone who posted this vitriolic of prose publicly, it just comes off as unprofessional.

I'd be curious then, about what you think about this? http://loup-vaillant.fr/articles/suboptimal-processes

(Disclaimer: this one is totally sour grapes. I left. Though I did learn afterwards, that this project was a significant net loss to the company.)

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#24

Post by jaggederest »

lauradhamilton wrote: post #22
com2kid wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am of two minds about this. On one hand, a "you broke the build dunce cap" isn't the worst of ideas. (Although by far I prefer a check-in system that doesn't allow the build to be broken for everyone...) I've been shamed, and semi-publically (within the team) shamed others, for not having written any unit tests before check-in. I'm also a big fan of publically celebrating successes. When a tester writes up a good b…

There is a difference between being shamed for breaking the build because you didn't run the test suite (and well knew that you should run the test suite) and being shamed for making an innocent mistake because you didn't know better.

And honestly, even breaking the build, you get a pass on the first one or two times, everyone has to learn somehow, and tests can be heisen-buggy.

Not so much on pushing broken builds to production though.

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#25

Post by steve_g »

com2kid wrote: post #18
amputect wrote: post #10

> 14. Humiliate people in public. If you have to choose only one item from the list, this one is really, shockingly effective and easy to implement. My wife was in tears the other day because she made two trivial, easily-fixable errors on some paperwork she was doing as a stand-in for someone who was out sick. She fixed the errors and resubmitted it when they were brought to her attention, but her boss still sent the…

I am of two minds about this. On one hand, a "you broke the build dunce cap" isn't the worst of ideas. (Although by far I prefer a check-in system that doesn't allow the build to be broken for everyone...) I've been shamed, and semi-publically (within the team) shamed others, for not having written any unit tests before check-in. I'm also a big fan of publically celebrating successes. When a tester writes up a good b…

Teasing, shaming and other forms of negative humor are very hard to do with a positive result. People are astonishingly different in what they can tolerate and how they respond. I suppose, with the right people, and the right team dynamics it can be OK.

But as a manager, I would strongly advise you to steer clear of that tactic. Even if you've got awesome emotional intelligence (and I don't) it's easy to screw up. It's not worth it.

Really, don't do it. Because when you screw up, it hurts real people.

There are better ways to encourage people - for example, the positve feedback to the tester you described.

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#27

Post by seivan »

cmdrfred wrote: post #4

A lot of this applies even to non-tech jobs, I think employers got a little to comfortable with high unemployment. Watch the hilarity ensue when those demographics change.

It won't. The supply will always outweigh the demand in professions that needs a better working environment the most (minimum wage, or lack of)

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#28

Post by S4M »

jaggederest wrote: post #24
lauradhamilton wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between being shamed for breaking the build because you didn't run the test suite (and well knew that you should run the test suite) and being shamed for making an innocent mistake because you didn't know better.

And honestly, even breaking the build, you get a pass on the first one or two times, everyone has to learn somehow, and tests can be heisen-buggy. Not so much on pushing broken builds to production though.

You should not be able to push broken builds to production. Shame to your manager if you are.

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#29

Post by zenogais »

dasil003 wrote: post #5

If you have to write this post to vent because you are stuck in a job you can't afford to leave and you are scared you'll be fired if you raise these issues to management, then so be it, write the bloody post and I hope you feel better. However in terms of practical changes, this post can neither benefit you nor anyone else. We all know about broken management cultures that this post describes, but none of those mana…

Knowing the author personally and having worked at the same company with him (he left there a long time ago). I can say it is neither. It was among the most broken places I've worked. The author himself is a great communicator and technical lead.

Perhaps we should accept the shocking reality that there are really startups this awful to work for :)

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#30

Post by jiggy2011 »

steve_g wrote: post #25
com2kid wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am of two minds about this. On one hand, a "you broke the build dunce cap" isn't the worst of ideas. (Although by far I prefer a check-in system that doesn't allow the build to be broken for everyone...) I've been shamed, and semi-publically (within the team) shamed others, for not having written any unit tests before check-in. I'm also a big fan of publically celebrating successes. When a tester writes up a good b…

Teasing, shaming and other forms of negative humor are very hard to do with a positive result. People are astonishingly different in what they can tolerate and how they respond. I suppose, with the right people, and the right team dynamics it can be OK. But as a manager, I would strongly advise you to steer clear of that tactic. Even if you've got awesome emotional intelligence (and I don't) it's easy to screw up. It…

Some industries seem to have a culture of harsh negative feedback given publicly and it seems to work ok, but then people have an expectation of that going in to the industry.
Post reply on HN