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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

#421

Post by sn0w_crash »

becquerel wrote: post #301
gorgoiler wrote: post #216

It’s knives out time, I’m afraid, for any activist or negative employee. I am flabbergasted by the number of people I’ve worked with who are flat out ungrateful when it comes to their relationship with their employer either being outright miserable and surly, or constantly virtue signalling about hypothetical problems that just drag everyone down the purity spiral. They get paid and they push code but they seem to th…

Uh... why should employees have a friendly relationship with their work? We don't work because we want to make friends. We work because otherwise we don't have money to buy food or clothe ourselves. This is not a voluntary arrangement. Expecting us to be grateful for it is absurd.

This seems a very hostile attitude towards your employer. If they treat you poorly, you are able to complain and voice discontent.

Is there no inverse to that?

If they treat you well, is there no reason to show gratitude?

I imagine coworkers would feel uncomfortable in such a hostile environment.

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

#422

Post by colechristensen »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #419
refulgentis wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a FAANG and I can tell you it's not nearly so positive as this. It was shocking coming from startup world. It's not so much "gee I only have 4 hours of work to do this week" It's...well, it's impossible to say how long it takes to do anything in particular, so I shouldn't feel stressed trying to get it done... oh there's actually no real management style/pressure to get things done here? Promo is seniority-based?…

I have a bad habit of working on important things that don't actually glitter, unblocking other teams and people constantly and recommending against shiny cool solutions, so promotions this year went to my two colleagues who took a glittery project, recommended a shiny shit idea, and have now delivered shit covered in glitter that is immediately getting sales/support feedback like um but it doesn't do what we needed…

>Now let me go back to waiting for anyone to respond to any of the EIGHT CRs I have out, just as well I'm working from home so I can use the time to clean the toilet.

There's nothing like being annoyed at waiting for a blocker to motivate me to do the dishes. Second best motivation is being in a boring meeting I'm not really needed in.

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

#423

Post by mirker »

danaris wrote: post #339
codefreeordie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Rest and vest" is a phrase that gets bandied about often -- including by people who are trying to do it. I couldn't tell you what fraction of employees, but there are folks hiding in all of the big tech companies that are happy with their comp, aren't trying to advance, and have adopted the "do the minimum to not get fired" approach to their work. If too many of these get together in one org or on one team, the whol…

> that are happy with their comp, aren't trying to advance Why does this > and have adopted the "do the minimum to not get fired" approach to their work necessarily have to go with this? What's wrong with deciding "I don't need to advance further; I like the work I do, I make enough money; I don't need to be hustling anymore"? It seems to me the concept of "enough" is hard to grasp for a lot of people, especially tho…

A rational actor will notice they get either a promotion or less work in the high/low work instances. If you work in between those boundaries, you get nothing extra.

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

#424

Post by just_steve_h »

jononomo wrote: post #383
matsemann wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I completely agree -- but it is remarkable how many Americans have bought into this idea that "government is bad".

We'll, it is true that our "ownership class" and its media and political mouthpieces have spent the better part of the last two generations drilling this notion into people's skulls will all the considerable power at their disposal.

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

#425

Post by luckydata »

I honestly don't understand what Sundar is talking about as everyone I know at google is covered in work and struggling to get through enormous amounts of red tape, but change would be a lot easier if leadership decided to, you know, lead for a change.

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

#426

Post by barrenko »

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…

The exact point of a big company is that nothing gets done.

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

#427

Post by sleepybrett »

naravara wrote: post #199
z9znz wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when the last time was that Mark or Sundar actually wrote any code they pushed to prod That would be a surpreme waste of company money, and probably they have engineers working for them who are far better developers than they are.

At one point Waffle House required all of its senior executives to spend time each year working on the line. (They probably still do I just haven't checked in a few years). They feel this is important for their management team to more viscerally understand the lived experiences of the people working, identify issues in their processes and technology, and generally foster team spirit among their staff.

I worked for a national us clothing retailer that didn't require but encouraged their 'corporate' employees to spend time in the stores mostly doing reshelves/reracks, tidying the sales floor, etc. Mostly around holidays/sales.

I worked in software for them but 'close to the store' for a bunch of my time there, so I was often in a store somewhere and always would help out as I had time permitting. It was useful for me, it was maybe useful for some of the buyers, I'm not sure it was useful for anyone else.

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

#428

Post by akmarinov »

fooster wrote: post #337
akmarinov wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no way you can sustain 8 hours/day of productive work 5 days a week as a developer. It’s not working a field or packing boxes, there’s a mental component that gets exhausted over time.

speak for yourself?

Then you’re not really doing software development, just copying code off of google ;)

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

#429

Post by sleepybrett »

wepple wrote: post #342
telchior wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a story in the news today about Taco Bell doing the same thing. More relevant to tech -- Automattic, Klaviyo and probably a lot of other companies require people in certain positions to do customer service rotations. Including C-level execs. I haven't heard of a version of that for coding, though.

Door dash gets their employees to do 3 deliveries a year

I'm pretty sure that's more to remind their corporate employees what life outside the tower is like. 'See how much better your job is than being a courier who barely makes enough to survive!'
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