Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#241

Post by weard_beard » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 1:08 PM UTC

kevinventullo wrote: post #164

scarecrowbob wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the book quite a bit, and it's been formative in my politics. That said, I am not sure if the take-away is that managers need to account for these factors by allowing for illegibility- I am not reading you claim that, but contextually that's how the discussion feels to me. I do agree with Scott that enforcing perfect legibility is impossible and even attempting to do so can cause immense problems, and I agree…

Thank you for the reply! I don't want to make any strong claims here, but my gut reaction to your first comment is that what one manager calls “allowance for illegibility”, another might call “trust in my reports”.

Everything rots, everything changes.

Investors want to know how long you're going to keep making them money. They don't like surprises.

Really, I think what we need are new ways for investors to participate and understand and structure their investments that don't have negative downward consequences for the structure of businesses.

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#242

Post by saghm » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

rqtwteye wrote: post #3

I have been in the workforce for almost 30 years now and I believe that everybody is getting more squeezed so they don’t have the time or energy to do a proper job. The expectation is to get it done as quickly as possible and not do more unless told so. In SW development in the 90s I had much more time for experimentation to figure things out. In the last years you often have some manager where you basically have to…

One time during a 1:1 with who I consider the best manager I ever had, in the context of asking now urgent something needed to get done, I said something along the llines of how I tend to throttle to around 60% of my "maximum power" to avoid burnout but I could push a bit harder if the task we were discussing was essential with to warrant it. He said that it wasn't necessary but also stressed that any time in the future that I did push myself further, I should always return to 60% power as soon as I could (even if the "turbo boost" wasn't enough to finish whatever I was working on. To this day, I'm equally amazed at both how his main concern with the idea of me only working at 60% most of the time was that I didn't let myself get pressured into doing more than that and the fact that there are probably very few managers out there who would react well to my stating the obvious truth that this is necessary

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#243

Post by 28304283409234 » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

Yes.

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#244

Post by motorest » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:08 PM UTC

rqtwteye wrote: post #3

I have been in the workforce for almost 30 years now and I believe that everybody is getting more squeezed so they don’t have the time or energy to do a proper job. The expectation is to get it done as quickly as possible and not do more unless told so. In SW development in the 90s I had much more time for experimentation to figure things out. In the last years you often have some manager where you basically have to…

> I have been in the workforce for almost 30 years now and I believe that everybody is getting more squeezed so they don’t have the time or energy to do a proper job. The expectation is to get it done as quickly as possible and not do more unless told so.

That's my impression as well, but I'd stress that this push is not implicit or driven by metrics or Jira. This push is sold as the main trait of software projects, and what differentiates software engineering from any other engineering field.

Software projects are considered adaptable, and all projects value minimizing time to market. This means that on paper there is no requirement to eliminate the need to redesign or reimplement whole systems or features. Therefore, if you can live with a MVP that does 70% of your requirements list but can be hacked together in a few weeks, most would not opt to spend more man months only to get minor increments. You'd be even less inclined to pay all those extra man months upfront if you can quickly get that 70% in a few weeks and from that point onward gradually build up features.

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#245

Post by numa7numa7 » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

zw123456 wrote: post #8

I recently retired after 45 years in tech. I started out in 1978 at Bell Labs. I have had great jobs and terrible jobs. Great bosses and horrific bosses. And all the things in between. I did not just survive, I thrived and beyond and worked at 3 start ups and a bunch of other companies large and small. What I learned is to not to be afraid. Regardless of what is happening around you. Fear is the enemy. Don't be afrai…

This is such a boomer style comment.

* Not super relevant.

* Gives advice that is extremely vague.

* The entire comment is essentially a humblebrag.

Would fit well on Facebook.

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#246

Post by Olreich » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:20 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #81

I think a lot of commenters here are projecting this article onto their work lives as tech office workers, but it's really more about the world of unskilled and semi-skilled service/gig workers, like handymen, furniture assemblers, delivery drivers, and so on. All these things can be true and they reinforce each other: The jobs suck The people willing to do them aren't very happy, skilled or competent The pay is minu…

None of those listed jobs is actually unskilled labor. Driving a big truck around narrow roads is a skill most don’t have, doing it at speed and running up and down to actually move the heavy packages is a skill most don’t have. Assembling furniture is a skill most don’t have, especially with complex engineered wood products that will break if stressed wrong. Handymen is literally just a collection of skilled labor jobs rolled into one guy that can handle small home improvement projects like carpentry, masonry, plumbing, and electrical. These are specialized jobs that have wrongly been labeled “un-skilled” or “semi-skilled” as if knowledge work is the only skill of value…

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#247

Post by I_Nidhi » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:28 PM UTC

The thing is if someone prepared for an interview and cracked the job, they have to be good at it. I have realised that it's often our perception of them which makes them bad at the their jobs. Similar to how we usually blame motivation when the actual problem is clarity of role or job. If we believe in the motive behind it and have clarity of our role in it, motivation does not remain an issue.

We make the jobs bad by not being able to properly share the incentive behind it, what good it brings and to whom. Most of the time people don't want to work because they don't see the ROI in it.

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#248

Post by jampekka » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:36 PM UTC

thi2 wrote: post #12

> At Fred Meyer, our local Kroger-owned grocery store, a bagger in his 70s put all my frozen items in a normal bag, and my chips in the cold storage bag I’d brought from home. A) Having to work a job (obviously not done out of passion) 70+ is really disheartening B) I don´t understand why this even is something that has to be done by a worker. I bought the groceries. I know where I want my stuff in my bags. Or I just…

When visiting US I feel very weird about baggers. Bagging stuff is something I can easily do myself while the cashier scans the products. Now instead of doing something useful, I just stand there idle and awkward watching the staff working.

In general having service workers spend a good part of their lives doing things that I can trivially with minimal effort and no loss of time do myself feels actively degrading these people. Perhaps some do get sense of being useful out of it, but I'd guess a lot of them would rather be doing something else if given choice.

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#249

Post by djmips » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:44 PM UTC

api wrote: post #68

stouset wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also this push to measure everything means that anything that can’t be measured isn’t valued. One of your teammates consistently helps unblock everyone on the team when they get stuck? They aren’t closing as many tickets as others so they get overlooked on promotions or canned. One of your teammates takes a bit longer to complete work, but it’s always rock solid and produces fewer outages? Totally invisible. Plus the…

The phenomenon being discussed here is a type of overfitting: https://sohl-dickstein.github.io/2022/11/06/strong-Goodhart.... The last 50 years or so of managerial practice has been a recipe for overfitting with a brutal emphasis on measuring, optimizing, and stack ranking everything. I think an argument can be made that this is an age of overfitting everywhere.

Interesting that something similar came up recently where an AI being trained might fake alignment with training goals.

Re: Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

#250

Post by djmips » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:49 PM UTC

jashmatthews wrote: post #237

alephnerd wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it theater? When customers give you money, they expect a date. When investors give you money, they want to see whether or not you are investing in the right initiatives. When you open a company, the IRS, SEC, and other regulators expect some amount of financial compliance. Do you want me to come to you and give you an ultimatum to give me an exact date, calculate amortization, and defend existing investments,…

If you round up great engineering orgs that ship impactful stuff more of them don't use JIRA than do. Linear, Basecamp, Asana, Monday etc. My experience is by the time an org gets hundreds of priorities and can't effectively delegate to sub orgs they're already fucked and there's no point working there if you want to do anything meaningful.

How do the great engineering orgs that ship impactful stuff organize / run a major project?