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When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

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Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#321

Post by greggman3 »

AceyMan wrote: post #8

I worked for the airlines (first career) and for public-facing employees it was a big deal if you got a 'good letter' from a customer. (It was equally suck if you happened to get a bad one...). We also could file 'thank you / attaboy' paperwork for our colleagues, both in our own department or ones we interacted with. Those were just as valuable (if not more) than ones from the customers. Over the years (11) during m…

I wonder if any unscrupulous people wrote in a bunch of fake customer "good letters" to get promoted

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#322

Post by peignoir »

Traster wrote: post #120
jedberg wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I loved about working at Netflix. We didn't have performance reviews. It was assumed that your performance was good to excellent, otherwise you wouldn't be working there anymore. You had a constant feedback loop with your manager on performance, but nothing was ever formal. Raises were completely divorced from any performance assessment. You were paid whatever they thought the max was for your skillset,…

I think this culture is often the difference between a company that's in exponential growth mode - where you care more about velocity than costs. When a company becomes a stable giant, the engineering department is no longer necessarily creating value in the same way it was before and often slowly becomes bloated.

Totally agree, when there is growth everyone is growing when the company is flat or worse then it’s a 0 sum game / survivor competition game.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#323

Post by slim »

RotANobot wrote: post #222
cpeterso wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard about a call center that rewarded customer service agents for short calls, so workers started immediately hanging up on some calls to bring their average call duration down.

> I heard about a call center that rewarded customer service agents for short calls Almost all call centres reward agents for short calls.

There's a target time. Something like 6 minutes. You can't just hang on customers

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#324

Post by aksjfnkajsnd »

BurningFrog wrote: post #104
vidarh wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be extremely demoralising for co-workers in all kinds of roles when they see that kind of recognition being given to someone who they feel don't deserve it. Personally I think it's risky to acknowledge these kind of things in front of a team for that reason unless it's better quantified. I've personally as well been in situations where I've been outright resentful because the recognition of someone I knew was…

> It can be extremely demoralising for co-workers in all kinds of roles when they see that kind of recognition being given to someone who they feel don't deserve it. This is why wages are secret. Everyone is convinced they deserve to be in the top half of earners.

Wages are tried to be kept secret by a company because a company wants to pay its employees as little as they can get away with.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#325

Post by p1necone »

jedberg wrote: post #245
iainmerrick wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The context being described is one in which you were just sacked at the whim of a manager. Doesn’t it seem a little funny to wait until the exit interview to ask if it came as a surprise? Maybe they’re going to act in that information somehow, perhaps sacking that manager if it’s part of a pattern of poor decisions, but they’re not planning on doing anything to help you personally, like overturning the dismissal. May…

> Doesn’t it seem a little funny to wait until the exit interview to ask if it came as a surprise? When else would they ask? The exit interview is when you are being informed of the decision. The process is you get a meeting invite for a 1 on 1 with your manager. They come in, tell you that you're getting let go and why, and then invite HR to come in. They then leave and HR goes over the paperwork and asks you about…

This sounds horrific. I would never want to work in an environment where sudden unexpected on the spot firing was done, even if it was uncommon.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#326

Post by jedberg »

wolco wrote: post #301
jedberg wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Netflix everyone gets an exit interview, no matter the reason for leaving.

How does it physically happen? Usually you are called into a meeting. Told your services are no longer required. Then you are given career resource support / paperwork with an offer and helped off the property. At what point is there a chance for an exit interview? After they first fire you, you are in shock.

After the paperwork, if you want to.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#328

Post by garfieldnate »

xvector wrote: post #145
sleepydog wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but in the specific case of Netflix, people are let go all the time , and managers have a lot of authority to make the decision to fire someone. Tenure doesn't matter, either -- you could work there for 6 years and end up getting fired when you get a new manager or the existing one decides you're phoning it in.

That's a massive amount of trust placed in managers. I've had asshole managers before that didn't have this much power thanks to company structure. Honestly I would never work at a place like this. Maybe it's lean and efficient for the company, but it definitely doesn't sound fun for the employee.

I have to agree; it's one thing to empower leaders to enact their vision. It's another to give them carte blanch to screw over the people they are supposed to be leaders to. Firing is serious, and it doesn't just affect someone's work life.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#329

Post by andrewem »

derefr wrote: post #219
xvector wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a massive amount of trust placed in managers. I've had asshole managers before that didn't have this much power thanks to company structure. Honestly I would never work at a place like this. Maybe it's lean and efficient for the company, but it definitely doesn't sound fun for the employee.

In this sort of setup, you'd expect there to be a chance of asshole managers; but you'd also expect that those asshole managers would be quickly fired by their non-asshole managers. Being stuck under an asshole would only happen if you were in reality stuck under a whole chain of assholes, leading all the way to the top. And if that was true, the company would be in the middle of imploding anyway.

This may sound flippant, but it's not: you mean like Uber. (See eg Susan Fowler's book Whistleblower.)

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#330

Post by vlz »

giantg2 wrote: post #175
sjtindell wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can giving praise hurt you?

If the company's unofficial policy is that if someone gets a high rating on the team, then someone else must be given a low rating to balance that out, even if they don't deserve it.

> someone else must be given a low rating to balance that out, even if they don't deserve it

I wonder how this kind of thinking starts. Is there any rationale for this?

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