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Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

usepeak.com

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Re: Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

#41

Post by aelaguiz »

mahyarm wrote: post #37
aelaguiz wrote: post #35

This is evil but I predict massive success for this product. I actually wonder if companies could start choosing other products they use (such as their CRM) based on how well they integrate with peak. I remember when I was CTO @ Zynga it was so hard to fire bad engineers. I wish I could have come up with cold hard data to get rid of them. Instead the best I could do was move them around. The company I worked for was…

I've never been in a managing role, why is it hard to fire bad engineers?

It's only hard at bad companies. This was an extraordinarily bad company.

Re: Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

#42

Post by logn »

aelaguiz wrote: post #35

This is evil but I predict massive success for this product. I actually wonder if companies could start choosing other products they use (such as their CRM) based on how well they integrate with peak. I remember when I was CTO @ Zynga it was so hard to fire bad engineers. I wish I could have come up with cold hard data to get rid of them. Instead the best I could do was move them around. The company I worked for was…

It's only evil depending on the context in which it's used. I spent a year contracting on odesk.com remotely. They take random screenshots while you work. I actually grew to appreciate it and found my work ethic to be improved. In the context of our company, we all worked remotely, kept in touch via IM/cam and email, and the monitoring apps were a way to keep everyone honest and committed while having a very long leash day-to-day. Managers (I was one of them) had access to screenshots but we rarely if ever reviewed them, except in cases prior to a firing (and often not even then). A dedicated, small team reviewed the screenshots and asked for refunds from their pay if they were on non-work related things. Often the managers were never notified unless the violations were extreme.

A sidenote, we were all contractors and most of us were freelancers essentially, so we were all easy to fire on a moment's notice. It kept teams strong and kept people from resenting their co-workers who couldn't keep up. And re-organizing/growing teams was easy, because firing _and_ hiring were so easy. I could do both without any management or peer approval.

Re: Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

#43

Post by aelaguiz »

kevinconroy wrote: post #36
aelaguiz wrote: post #35

This is evil but I predict massive success for this product. I actually wonder if companies could start choosing other products they use (such as their CRM) based on how well they integrate with peak. I remember when I was CTO @ Zynga it was so hard to fire bad engineers. I wish I could have come up with cold hard data to get rid of them. Instead the best I could do was move them around. The company I worked for was…

The danger with this hard data approach, though, is that you can end up with good engineers who hate to play the numbers game and bad engineers who realize they just need to hit average numbers to save their ass. And clueless HR departments won't know the difference.

Yeah, totally. Maybe there is no answer other than to fix the organization that made it so hard to get rid of bad engineers in the first place ;) Or quit (I chose quit).

Re: Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

#46

Post by rpicard »

apike wrote: post #29

There's a lot of backlash here against the idea that managers will use this to micro-manage. That's possible, sure. Bad managers will be bad. The reason I'm interested in Peak is that it may be a good tool to implement the "trust, but verify" approach to management. I feel like I under-manage my team (7 people) because I really dislike interrupting people. I generally assume everybody is doing something productive, a…

A less intrusive alternative might be to start using something like https://idonethis.com/. That way you can start offering help when you see, "Still trying to find that bug; didn't get much else done."

Re: Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

#48

Post by emhart »

Haters gonna hate. I live in a work environment where I am micromanaged like crazy. Drives me nuts, doesn't let me do long runs on single projects, etc. This product seems like it would provide the information my bosses are looking for without interrupting my work nearly as much.

If people are upset at the idea of micromanaging, fine. Unfortunately though, it exists, and likely always will. If this lets the employee suffer less for it, I'm a fan.

Re: Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

#49

Post by analog31 »

andrewkreid wrote: post #17

I want my company to use this just so I can write scripts to game the metrics. For bonus points, can it integrate with WooBoard ( http://www.wooboard.com/ ) so we can do ridiculous tracking and ridiculous recognition in the same place?

Gaming metrics could be tested during the interview process:

"That was a nice job solving FizzBuzz. Now, please tell us concisely how you would solve this problem: The purchasing department has a metric for buying in volume to get discounts. The manufacturing department has a metric for cutting inventory. There's a huge Dumpster next to the loading dock."

(Based on a true story).

Re: Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

#50

Post by nikatwork »

flippyhead wrote: post #26
zzzmarcus wrote: post #2

If a company I worked at implemented this, and I knew about it, I'd quit. Despite the tagline about nobody liking micromanaging (not to mention being micromanaged), this is software that explicitly encourages micromanaging. None of the metrics they track are directly tied to productivity, they're just ways for managers who don't trust their employees to be Big Brother with fewer uncomfortable personal interactions.

I never understood this pessimistic sentiment. It's just more data. Of course when evaluating the data you get, you have to consider the context -- people work on all kinds of things that may or may not be measured. Without it you don't have those metrics anyways.

Once upon a time, I was working lots of all-nighters and really busting my gut. Yet my boss was getting angry at me for no reason. Wtf? So eventually I sat him down and asked if there was a problem. Turns out he was tracking the wrong user when monitoring my after hours data, and he thought I was lying about my overtime. He was fuming and thinking about firing me.

Oh, you say. But he was just misusing the data! He should have collected more or different data! Look, the takeaway is that many managers will use this kind of data as a crutch, not a supplement. The employees will suffer and the biz will lose good staff. How about treating your staff like fucking adults, and if they are hitting the agreed delivery milestones, save your whip for the bedroom?

The most effective management system I have used was at Yahoo. You would fill in a daily and weekly TODO list on a wiki page, and the deltas were automatically emailed to your PM. Simple, respectful and effective.

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