331–340 of 410 posts
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> When you interview ask how many people with MBAs and no programming experience you'll be working under. If someone asked that, I would probably consider that a red flag, that they are mistrustful of "business types" and probably difficult to work with.
There are other less direct ways to pose the question.
Incompetent management is a plague on the industry. And the cause of it is that programmers are relatively low status. In so many businesses, there are "business guys" who end up managing the engineering staff-- at one level or another, but too often it's the direct manager role--and these business guys are incompetent at engineering. When you don't know whether a direct report is doing good or not because you don't…
I'm not sure what you mean by "slip lower and lower in status". The software industry has worked pretty much the way you describe as long as I've been a part of it, and I haven't noticed any sort of diminution of status for software engineers. If anything, the trends go the other way: the industry has embraced the idea of a non-management career development track for engineers. Big companies like Microsoft, Google, a…
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> Are the employment laws a lot weaker in the US? Don't know about the details of the UK specifically, but, yes, employment protection laws in the US are all-but-non-existent, with at-will employment allowing immediate termination for any but specifically-prohibited (e.g., race, sex, religious, etc., discrimination, retaliation for invoking certain other protections, etc.) reasons.
I'm genuinely shocked by this. I'm all for free market mechanisms but come on ... a system without strong employee protection must be naturally prone to abuse.
Advantage of negotiating position is usually expressed through compensation rates because it's bad business to make employees hate the company after they already have a job. But, you know, I work in software and can't tell what it's like being a barista or farm worker.
Edit: and please correct my misunderstanding if you mean something else by abuse. That's just the only meaning I can think of.
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YES. Everybody deserves this. As a manager, I try extremely hard to make sure this happens. The way I think of it is this. On the day you are fired, when you get called in a room, if I ask you, "why do you think you're here?", you'd reply: "I think I'm getting fired". Because I want us to have had so many conversations about it, and been so direct, that the actual firing is incredibly unsurprising. I think any manage…
Absolutely agree, it's just that it doesn't always happen. I tell every new boss that I'll be completely upfront w/ them regarding my thoughts on how things are going, if I'm thinking of jumping ship, etc - but in return I expect them to do the same. Ideally both sides are on the same page at any point of time as to what the situation is.
There are people who were at OpenDNS in the early days who were incredible, and as we grew, became less and less incredible, largely because the things that made them incredible actually started to be really frustrating as the company grew and they didn't want to change those things. So they had to leave. Usually it was a series of conversations about how the person, their peers, and the company were all unhappy, and…
Getting fired and getting laid off are totally different things. These days there is no stigma attached to the latter.
I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand it, the legal distinction is whether you're terminated "with cause." That's what most people refer to as "fired." The implication is that you can't collect unemployment or severance. At a professionally managed company, termination "with cause" will be the culmination of a "progressive discipline" process unless you do something so egregious that they must walk you straight out the door.
In common parlance, "laid off" means that you are not given "cause," and are eligible for those benefits.
Under some conditions, a company that is planning to lay off more than a certain number of people must announce it in advance. This is a "mass layoff." Also, a laid off person is potentially eligible for re-hiring, and the details are often written into union contracts.
I suspect due to the legal implications of mass layoffs, companies will use some other term such as "reduction of force" for routine business-downturn layoffs.
Naturally, if a company needs to reduce its workforce, they will sack the weakest employees, but it will typically be done without "cause" in order to avoid a potential lawsuit for false termination, and because letting people have their unemployment benefit is the decent thing to do.
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That is the one thing I really don't like about the whole fire fast mentality that is starting to pop up, particularly the extreme examples of "fire for any reason as soon as the person isn't a perfect fit, regardless of overall quality". I'm fine with that, but make sure that I know it's likely coming well in advance. Make sure I understand that I'm not pulling my weight. Make sure I understand that the company is m…
> I'm fine with that, but make sure that I know it's likely coming well in advance What's missing from the equation is what it does to others. Sure one person got fired, bam! easy peasy. Well not so easy because everyone else in the company witnessed that. It becomes a message to everyone else. "As soon you hit the first bump, or maybe you are sick, or have a family emergency we'll throw you under a bus". Everyone pa…
I come from Europe, where "getting fired" seems to have a slightly different weight for people, and I really need to ask this. Please assume I'm a total ignorant in this regard, and explain this to me like you would to a young teen. Why getting fired is seen as so bad? What's the difference in your view (in terms of perception) between being fired and being laid off? How can a company know that someone has been fired…
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Simon Wardley has an alternative terminology for the same idea: Pioneers, Settlers and Town Planners ( http://blog.gardeviance.org/2012/06/pioneers-settlers-and-to... ). He also posits that as organisations evolve from left to right, they still need teams in the previous states for the business to work effectively. Sometimes these are outsourced, sometimes they're not done at all.
Harlan Mills has a much better metaphor that captures how different roles match with different personality types and doesn't insist that people be fired as if the company "out grows" certain engineers. ( http://javatroopers.com/Mythical_Man_Month.html#Chapter_3 ) If companies outgrow anyone it's executive leadership that for whatever reason can no longer motivate and inspire their workforce.
I've been in this situation before. I couldn't take direction from anyone who thought they knew what we did better than me, since I had been there from day one and saw the thing through. Also there's resentment that they're jumping on late and riding coat tails when you've already done the hard yards.
I don't think executive leadership is actually about motivating staff per-se and more about building little fortresses to further their career ends.
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That is the one thing I really don't like about the whole fire fast mentality that is starting to pop up, particularly the extreme examples of "fire for any reason as soon as the person isn't a perfect fit, regardless of overall quality". I'm fine with that, but make sure that I know it's likely coming well in advance. Make sure I understand that I'm not pulling my weight. Make sure I understand that the company is m…
> I'm fine with that, but make sure that I know it's likely coming well in advance What's missing from the equation is what it does to others. Sure one person got fired, bam! easy peasy. Well not so easy because everyone else in the company witnessed that. It becomes a message to everyone else. "As soon you hit the first bump, or maybe you are sick, or have a family emergency we'll throw you under a bus". Everyone pa…
> Erik Wolpaw, a writer at Valve fell ill (diagnosed with ulcerative colitis) in 2004. He knew he couldn’t fulfil his duties at work and made the choice to leave Valve. Erik tried to quit, Gabe refused to accept his resignation and said “Your job is to get better. That is your job description at Valve. So go home to your wife and come back when you are better.” On leaving Erik turned to fellow Valver Chet and said “Well, I guess we know where we’re working for the rest of our lives.”
There are people who were at OpenDNS in the early days who were incredible, and as we grew, became less and less incredible, largely because the things that made them incredible actually started to be really frustrating as the company grew and they didn't want to change those things. So they had to leave. Usually it was a series of conversations about how the person, their peers, and the company were all unhappy, and…
In his classic book Accidental Empires ( http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Empires-Silicon-Millions-Co... ), Robert X. Cringely wrote that if you think of a market as an invasion beach you can think of three kinds of employees at tech companies: commandos, infantry, and police. Commandos are people who love challenges and hate structure. They'll happily take on missions that other people think are crazy or impossible,…