The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced • Hacker News Board

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#261

Post by StavrosK » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 11:18 PM UTC

JakeStone wrote: post #227

StavrosK wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can a hug be so embarrassing that it needs to be forgiven? It's a euphemism I'm missing, isn't it.

She and I were somewhat standoffish people back then, not really huggy types. Meanwhile, I come into the office, 3 sheets to the wind, see her, and said something like "S., I am going to miss working with you so much!" at a fairly loud volume, and I'm a good half foot taller than her. It's something I still have to buy her a beer for every couple of years or so.

Hmm, I still can't relate. It sounds like a very sweet gesture. If you told me you'd miss me and hugged me, I'd buy you a beer.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#262

Post by Spooky23 » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 11:23 PM UTC

throwaway66666 wrote: post #90

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #79

My employer, a US DoD component, had a program called “On The Spot” awards. The idea was that if you had done something outstanding, your first line supervisor could authorize an immediate bonus of up to $1000. Being the DoD, it couldn’t be that simple. They decided that actually the bonuses had to be approved by your second, third, and fourth line supervisors. And also by the program manager at the sponsoring agency…

Damn! My current CEO wants to do the same. But he wants people to vote across teams. EG, backend engineer nominates machine learning researcher. Machine learning nominates HR. For a $1000 bonus, or a new ipad previous generation. Reasoning is that the manager cannot approve because that would reward favoritism, so random people nominating random people it is. Bad ideas coming from a good place I guess, but people are…

These schemes always suck. After a major datacenter migration and other big transformation projects, that place I worked at setup an awards committee and had unbiased judges rate nominations. I was the only technical reviewer... the rest were customer success manager types, hr, even accounting.

End of the day, the most passionately written nominations were for people in IT support, mostly for doing shit they weren’t supposed to do. The “customer champion” replaced toner quickly at our expense, (it was supposed to be paid for by the customer for reasons). The other big one, that came with cash, was given to someone who was a notorious master of getting other people to do their work.

I felt bad for the organizers, as they really intended to do a good thing.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#263

Post by GlenTheMachine » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 11:24 PM UTC

defen wrote: post #243

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are in the military, you can use challenge coins to get yourself free drinks. The idea is that when everyone is at a bar, the guy or gal with the challenge coin from the highest ranking officer never has to pay for rounds of drinks. I've never seen a civilian use one. We don't spend much time in bars, and the feeling I get is that if I did try to whip one out in the presence of uniformed personnel -- a challen…

How long are challenge coins "valid"? If someone had a challenge coin from Eisenhower (not sure those exist, let's pretend they do) would that person essentially always win, forever?

I honestly don’t know. The guy whose coin I have is now retired.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#264

Post by BryantD » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 11:26 PM UTC

gameswithgo wrote: post #151

I worked for a while for Thomson Reuters, where some years ago somebody in charge read that companies with value statements performed better than those that did not. So they hired a 3rd party consultant to write down their values and they had these posted all over the walls. They also had posters of stuff like "the mood elevator" pasted up in the kitchen: https://themoodelevator.com/ Everyone I felt like I could talk…

Values work really well if the company is actually serious about them. Having a third party consultant write down your values is usually an indication that you're not too serious about it.

Amazon's values work because management is deadly serious about implementing them. You may not enjoy working at a company organized around those values, but they keep the majority of people focused where Bezos wants them focused. Apple has a very different set of values; still works. Ditto Google.

At companies under a certain size, you don't need to write down your values to make sure everyone knows what they are. One of the common causes of growth failure is forgetting to keep an eye on your values as you grow, and then all of a sudden half the new engineers don't seem to understand why you need to keep latency as low as possible.

Here's an interviewing tip. If the company you're interviewing at has core values, ask how they apply to the team you're looking at. Bonus points if it's a core value that doesn't seem to apply -- maybe something about product if you're interviewing for a datacenter job, say. If the answer is weak, the company might have lost track of how it wants to do business.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#265

Post by crooked-v » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 11:27 PM UTC

niccl wrote: post #244

A different view: I'm a contract dev at a very small company (20 all up, 2.5 devs, all contractors). The bosses are owners, and work _crazy_ hours. Occasionally they'll give out $100 supermarket vouchers, with a hand-written Thank You message, when we've hit some milestone. It's worth barely more than an hour's work, but I still appreciate it. I'm pretty well paid there, and to give a cash bonus that would be signifi…

I'm sure it helps that it's actually something useful, unlike some of the other examples given in the comments - everyone needs groceries, after all.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#266

Post by petra » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 11:28 PM UTC

nothrabannosir wrote: post #241

x2f10 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a good way to go about this?

Get a competing job offer. Whatever they offer you, ask for a comparable raise of your current workplace. Be very explicit about it being non-negotiable. Whether to mention the competing job offer is a matter of taste; it helps prove you mean business, but it can damage trust. Either way: if they say no you leave. This only works if, and because , you are ready to walk away. It's the easiest form of negotiating. But…

Why does mentioning a competing job offer damages trust ?

Aren't we all adults and know this is how this game is played ?

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#267

Post by kyllo » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 11:28 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #253

bastawhiz wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The metaphor doesn't work. You wouldn't dangle a steak dinner as a reward to a group of people who you could reasonably assume were mostly vegan. The intended reward _is_ the steak, because steak is expensive and delicious when prepared well. Yes, you could order a nice salad, but don't you think it sort of misses the point? It's not on the employee to enjoy the reward they're being offered, it's on the management to…

'Steak dinner' is an American English idiom for 'a nice meal'. And it isn't culturally sensitive to assume that a group of Indians are vegans.

That's debatable, I'm American and would take an offer of a "steak dinner" to literally mean steak. Even presupposing you're correct that it's generally understood by Americans as an idiom, assuming that non-Americans understand American idioms is a form of ignorance, if not deliberate arrogance.

No one's saying "assume they are vegans," we're saying "don't assume they eat meat." Big difference.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#268

Post by Spooky23 » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 11:31 PM UTC

Nexxxeh wrote: post #195

gameswithgo wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A challenge coin! Are people who tend to run companies total children, or do they think that those of us working for them are children?

I think it's more a cultural thing. Not everyone is financially motivated, they want the recognition. A challenge coin is a tool for doing that. It's in a similar vein to a medal. It might have been misjudged in this instance however, but they're a thing in military circles so I can imagine how it seemed like a good idea. Tbh I'd have been really pleased, but I can appreciate that's not universal.

It’s a big thing among some Infosec people who get a rise out of the cyber warrior nonsense.

One guy I know has enough of these things you’d think he was a navy seal, mostly from training sessions. His actual job is monk-like copying/summarizing of NIST documents and CVEs.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#269

Post by arkades » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 11:33 PM UTC

I’ve got two from the hospital:

After a couple of trainees in our area committed suicide, there was a cry and a hue about attending to trainee mental health. Our hospital took this to heart, and decided: they’d hold a resident mental health day!

This took the form of an iced cream party for the residents. Specifically, it meant they got some tri-flavor cartons of iced cream and stuck them in the physicians lounge. They did not give the residents any protected time to take a shit, much less go down to the physicians lounge for iced cream. None of the residents got any, and the attendings ended up eating it. They subsequently sent out an email patting themselves on the back for the efforts they were making to keep any more residents from jumping off the fucking roof.

Another time: it was physician day. I hadn’t actually seen this before, most hospitals don’t bother praising physicians, but this was a safety net hospital with shit salaries. The trainees on the psych floor were encouraged to go down and get some of that free salad and pizza.

All the patients had been seen, nothing was going down, so they handed off the floor to the nurses and mid levels to go get some of that fancy pizza the folks in charge kept telling them to go get. This is normal; multiple staff qualified to run a code remained on the floor (a code is basically an algorithm for administering cpr, with attendant drugs).

A medicine attending waited for them to leave the floor and go downstairs. The moment they were good and gone, he called a fake code. When the mid-levels, nurses, and med students arrived, all trained in running a code, the attending put them aside, and kept waiting for the residents to arrive. Eventually, of course, they did.

They then proceeded to get ripped new assholes for having had the temerity to go downstairs for lunch after having been told by their seniors to do so, and leaving their patients appropriately covered. They got sent to lunch just so they could be scolded for getting lunch.

But that sort of shit only happens to psych residents. Other residents would never be told to take 20 mins to grab lunch.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#270

Post by Theodores » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 11:33 PM UTC

Areading314 wrote: post #3

On a team with many colleagues from India, was repeatedly promised steak dinners if we were able to meet deadlines.

Oh dear! I can relate to this as I am invariably the lone vegetarian. I don't have meat or fish smells in my life and so the idea of dining out with people eating steaks is just abhorrent. I prefer not to go if I know I am going to struggle with the menu but it is never easy to refuse the kind gesture. It comes across as anti-social.

People also order from the more expensive end of the menu if the company is paying. Normally they might eat a chicken sandwich for lunch but if the company pays they are eating dead octopus or some other endangered species more intelligent than them.

The other one that I have seen is outright vegetarian baiting, so that means ordering things like crispy chicken's feet or sheep testicles just to push things to the culinary extreme.

Working with Indian co-workers on training in the UK the Friday treat was KFC. Eaten at desks. So the whole place reeked of the stuff and every surface had the finger licking slime. Bins had bones in them. If you are the lone vegetarian you have to just keep quiet. But with 6-7 people over from India in the office? The company can't just change its KFC ritual.

Few people were what you might call athletic in that office.