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The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

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

#311

Post by brokenmachine »

7402 wrote: post #71

At the end of a project death-march (at one point I turned in a >100 hour timecard), the division director had a celebratory thank-you dinner for all the managers involved in the project. My direct supervisor was at first puzzled as to why I wasn't coming with him to the dinner at the end of the day, and then he was quite appalled - I think he later had words with the director about the whole thing.

Call me ungrateful but I can't think of anything I'd less like doing than being forced into a dinner with coworkers that I already spend more time with than my family or friends.

Get the money, then go home.

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

#312

Post by epage »

bitL wrote: post #229

I remember one young aspiring manager (now director at Google) destroying a new talented employee by completely disregarding their work (which was the main component of their brand new successful system and helped said manager to a promotion), then later requesting that very same employee to smile more and be as energetic/optimistic as when they first walked into the office. Beatings will continue until morale improv…

This reminds me of an internship. During my midterm review, my manager confessed to the org always giving interns terrible projects, the ones no one wanted to do, and later in the meeting procedes to dock me for not being enthusiastic enough about my project.

For my final review, I got high marks without changing a thing.

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

#313

Post by 0az »

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'm inclined to believe that it's the story and tradition, less the coin itself.

Incidentally, Howard Tayler's Unofficial Anecdotal History of Challenge Coins is excellent.

https://www.schlockmercenary.com/assets/img/uploads/UAHCC/UA...

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

#314

Post by datashaman »

hackerbabz wrote: post #301
function_seven wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh God I forgot about that place. I went there once after hearing about the hype from a coworker ("Dude, great selection and cheap as hell!"). The place was miserable. Dirty clothing strewn all over the place. I bought a couple shirts for like $8 each. Neither of them fit all that well. They disintegrated after one wash. One was cut crooked. Seems like the whole company was a thin (and I mean thin ) quick fashion ven…

Sweatshops can do a good job though. They must have have used particularly poor workers for some reason.

Poor workers. For some reason. ISWYDT.

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

#315

Post by brokenmachine »

maxxxxx wrote: post #207
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…

For me any kind of motivational posters on the wall are an immediate red flag. Usually it means that things aren't going well and management can't come up with anything better than hanging up posters. Well-run companies show their values by the way they work. They don't need posters.

My company sends emails about online surveys.

The surveys are thankfully anonymous.

I know these useless surveys will never have any effect, and you never hear about any results or changes that have happened because of the surveys.

There are only checkboxes for "mildly agree", "agree", etc.

But there is usually a tiny "other comments" box. So I usually write long diatribes about all the company's failings in that tiny "other comments" box.

At least I'm getting paid while filling them out, but they must be wondering who the disgruntled truth-sayer is, since I'm sure not many in the company actually bother to do the surveys.

The only reason I know not many actually bother to do the surveys is because they do release stats on that, and encourage people to do them - I imagine it's some kind of Executive KPI for worker engagement or some such bullshit.

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

#316

Post by RantyDave »

StavrosK wrote: post #34

We need to find a name for a gesture so small in its generosity that it ends up being offensive. No bonus would have left me disappointed, but a $50 bonus would have made me angry. Like when Delta gave a food voucher to make up for a 5-hour delay on a 30-minute file. The voucher was for $3. Fuck Delta.

Well, there's your name then - a "fuckdelta".

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

#317

Post by brokenmachine »

lostphilosopher wrote: post #49
lostphilosopher wrote: post #42

Not a counter point to this article, but a counter point to the efficacy of monetary rewards. > "Study showed that monetary incentives are great for routine, mechanical work. But how does it play when talking about cognitive, advanced tasks? Not well at all." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgKKPQiRRag Counter-counter point: If anyone ever points you to this for evidence _you_ shouldn't get a bonus/monetary reward sy…

> "Every day was a hot new idea and yesterday’s priority was forgotten. Why bother making progress towards a goal that will change tomorrow?" ("Rob's" comment on the OP's article) This to me is the single biggest killer of motivation / productivity. If you've got this problem, I agree with the video that even large monetary rewards won't salvage productivity.

I agree that is bad, but what about a bureaucracy where everything is so convoluted that you can never get any idea off the ground?

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

#318

Post by inuhj »

foota wrote: post #233
chatmasta wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some states (Washington, IIRC?) require overtime hours be tracked even for salaried positions, and those hours should be 1.5x regular rate. (This is off the top of my head based on an internship 6 years ago)

I think this may be true beneath a certain salary amount, but it's relatively low for software.

For California it depends on both type of work and compensation. You can still be required to pay overtime to a salaried employee if they don't meet certain criterion such as being in a managerial position.

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

#319

Post by dbcurtis »

tonyarkles wrote: post #300
hinkley wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet money that most of those managers weren't even in the building for most of that death march. I have a standing rule. If I work overtime it's because I fucked up. I said something would be done by Friday but I goofed off, I'll work. If I'm working nights and weekends for business reasons, then my manager is in the building the entire time. A lot of them tone down their rhetoric when you make them put skin in t…

It’s funny to tell this story in a thread about bad incentives, but the “managers not there” part reminded me of it. I worked at a startup that did citizen identity management for government (think SSO for an entire province). Because of gov’t IT policies, we often had to deploy after hours, in a kind of weird “managed IT” process. We still automated the process, but couldn’t press the button without being on a confe…

Yes, having a manager just be there showing appreciation is huge. My story is trying to crack a hot, high-impact bug that got reported days before product launch. Daily 8:00AM and 5:00PM status meetings on Saturday and Sunday reporting to multiple VP's kind of hot. So the debug lab manager had little clue how to hang a logic analyzer probe any more, and no clue how to read the traces. But he brought in take-out 3 meals a day and did whatever else to keep us well-fed and caffeinated during the ordeal. And if we wanted to consult with somebody, he tracked them down and got them on the phone. Basically just hung out and said "Thanks" often.

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

#320

Post by nefitty »

pwodhouse wrote: post #92

John Oliver did a segment explaining how Murray Coal gave people bonus checks as low as $3 for dodging safety policies to mine more coal, and said "they can void their checks if they don't want the bonuses". Some miners mailed the checks back voided with "Eat Shit Bob Murray" on them.

Murray is possibly one of the most infuriating contemporary figures I've ever learned about: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Murray

After one of his mines collapsed:

> The MSHA report heavily criticized Bob Murray's volatile behavior during the crisis, especially at daily briefings for family members, where he "frequently became very irate and would start yelling," even making young children cry, it said. He told family members that "the media is telling you lies" and "the union is your enemy."

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26050043/ns/us_news-life/t/year-af...

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