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'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

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Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#311

Post by cassianoleal »

toss1 wrote: post #303
hef19898 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not getting rid of "legacy" stuff that doesn't work is a, IMHO, a version of throwing good moneybafter bad money. Instead of acknowledging that the unusable code, or whatever, was a crucial part of understanding the problem, and throw it out once the problem was understood, people tend to build upon those not fit for purpose things...

YES!! Even coming from an attitude of being big on abstractions and generalized/scaled solutions, I cannot overstate the importance of writing a throw-away version at the outset. Hit the highlights, write it fast & dirty, use it, extend it a bit as you start to understand the system — then throw it away . Use that knowledge to design and build your real system, from scratch, but informed by your earned knowledge. >>a…

Code is Liability, the Less the Better

https://www.infoq.com/news/2011/05/less-code-is-better/

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#312

Post by hbrn »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #211
bobobob420 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the mindset of failure. The team standup has 10x more priority than some dumb basketball league

Agree to disagree. A team standup has close to no value. Having a high quality of life has a lot of value (including increased work productivity). As the California Milk Campaign went - happy cows make quality cheese, and happy workers make quality work... Again - one can be moved, the other cannot.

Getting a bunch of introverts to talk to each other every day can have tremendous value for the company.

But in most companies standups are just agile cargo cult. Nobody knows why they are doing standups, so naturally they turn into "I publicly report to my manager and pretend I work really hard, because everybody else is doing that".

People forgot (or never realized?) that standups are not for the manager, they are for the team.

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#313

Post by jedberg »

telchior wrote: post #252

Which companies with similar concerns have actually managed to increase productivity in a way that satisfies the C-suite? A much older anecdote: I had a friend who worked at Yahoo around the time Marissa Mayer was coming on as CEO. At the time, they were allowing semi-WFH for certain positions. I literally never saw this guy go to work, or actually do any work. He was part of a stand-up comedy workshop and spent 100%…

I think Yahoo was a special case though. At that point in the company's life, they attracted the kinds of people that wanted a job they could phone in. I knew a bunch of Ex-Yahoos, and they all cited this fact as one of the main reasons they left.

I also knew some Yahoos at that time, who were not like that, but were frustrated so many of their coworkers were, especially since they had to carry the load. But they liked their job so they stayed anyway.

Marissa came into a terrible situation, and tried to make some big changes to fix it. She wasn't successful, but she did try.

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#314

Post by flybrand »

codegeek wrote: post #287
fefe23 wrote: post #245

As a consultant, I come around a bit. I have seen many companies with very poor productivity, and in zero of those cases was it laziness of the employees. In fact they usually would have loved to be more productive. Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight. But as companies grow they install more and more rules and regulations that end up making sure nothing ever gets done. It is not unusual to meet "develo…

"Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight." I disagree. There are plenty of people who would love to be dead weight just to float around in a company. The larger the team/company, the more chances of those people being around. They pretend to be always busy and doing something but don't actually get anything done. Seen it all for 18+ years. Having said that, there are plenty of people as well who would LOVE…

100%

Working in a +200 yr old manufacturer, and some entire teams may fit that definition.

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#315

Post by tiahura »

catlifeonmars wrote: post #217
tiahura wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biglaw attorneys routinely bill 2200 hours a year in 6 minute increments. Add in nonbillable work and self-written off time, and many of these attorneys work 60+ hour weeks. Plus, they do this into their 50’s.

Any idea why six minutes and not some other?

It varies, but 6 min = 1/10th of an hour so it’s pretty common.

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#316

Post by satisfice »

You can’t really tell from a distance if engineers are productive. The key to success is having a culture where people are motivated and principled so that they manage their own productivity. That culture requires respect. Zuckerberg isn’t showing that to his people, and he is paying the price for that.

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#317

Post by fefe23 »

codegeek wrote: post #287
fefe23 wrote: post #245

As a consultant, I come around a bit. I have seen many companies with very poor productivity, and in zero of those cases was it laziness of the employees. In fact they usually would have loved to be more productive. Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight. But as companies grow they install more and more rules and regulations that end up making sure nothing ever gets done. It is not unusual to meet "develo…

"Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight." I disagree. There are plenty of people who would love to be dead weight just to float around in a company. The larger the team/company, the more chances of those people being around. They pretend to be always busy and doing something but don't actually get anything done. Seen it all for 18+ years. Having said that, there are plenty of people as well who would LOVE…

I have met a few of those people, but every single one of them needed a justification.

Some told me they felt wronged by the company somehow. For example they had experienced bullying, or didn't get promoted when they felt they should have been, or they had contributed something and then it got cut from the product, something like that in most cases. Now didn't feel they owed the company anything. Yet others said the pay is not enough to really get them invested in the work.

The fact that they needed these excuses tells me they felt what they did to be morally wrong and didn't really want to be dead weight.

I personally have done a few projects that turned out to be purely compliance based, and had no merit whatsoever. I remember the feeling of wasting my life to be absolutely soul crushing and I have been avoiding that kind of project as if my life depended on it.

Your mileage may vary.

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#318

Post by matsemann »

abledon wrote: post #302
fefe23 wrote: post #245

As a consultant, I come around a bit. I have seen many companies with very poor productivity, and in zero of those cases was it laziness of the employees. In fact they usually would have loved to be more productive. Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight. But as companies grow they install more and more rules and regulations that end up making sure nothing ever gets done. It is not unusual to meet "develo…

> Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight. Have you worked in Government? edit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26727803 for an example

I hate this take of "gobernment bad, capitalism good". As a consultant having worked for both large government agencies and large corporations, they are all the same.

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#319

Post by codegeek »

bartread wrote: post #310
codegeek wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nobody wants to spend their life being dead weight." I disagree. There are plenty of people who would love to be dead weight just to float around in a company. The larger the team/company, the more chances of those people being around. They pretend to be always busy and doing something but don't actually get anything done. Seen it all for 18+ years. Having said that, there are plenty of people as well who would LOVE…

Sure those people exist: but there are plenty of people who aren't that way. I've worked a couple of different places where the systems, processes and structures in place effectively rendered me as deadweight. In both cases it was incredibly stressful and had a profoundly negative impact on my mental health. In the first case I hung around for quite a while hoping things would get better (because they had been better…

Agreed. I edited my comment to talk about the ones who do want to do something (I was one of those at my last corporate job)

Re: 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

#320

Post by wyclif »

metabagel wrote: post #243
rootusrootus wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full word is perquisite. Perk is slang.

There is no such word as "perq" in American English. https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=perq Perhaps, it is British English.

I don't think so. Garner's is an American English usage guide, and they define it (see above).
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