When employees feel slighted, they work less • Hacker News Board

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#61

Post by greenchair » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:51 PM UTC

doubled112 wrote: post #49

javier2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. We just lost our "slightly below average" developers, but he was a nice guy and tries to deliver. But they have been slow to replace him, and now we are likely looking at 3 months before a new hire will just be in place, plus the new hire will not have the three years worth of experience the other guy had, so their project will likely be slower than at it already was for the rest of the year.

I’d take “slightly below average but is generally good to work with and tries hard” over “genius asshole” almost any day. Few projects require the latter. There’s also the problem with how useless so many are at their jobs with no way to be sure until its too late.

mostly agree but the below average try hard is also the one introducing the most bugs so I'm torn on this.

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#62

Post by e3bc54b2 » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:52 PM UTC

jmyeet wrote: post #45

A lot of work is fake work. It's just social signaling. It's just a game of being liked. Just look at the stats for autistic people who have difficulty finding and maintaining employment, not because they're bad at their actual job but because neurotypical people just don't like them. Anyone who has worked for a remotely large organization has met plenty of people who have been promoted well beyond their actual abili…

> How does the CCP avoid empire-building, institutional rot and general bureaucratic paralysis?

Oh they don't! In exactly the same way US didn't. Right now, a lot of factors have put enough tailwind into Chinese economy and the inertia is a bitch to retreat, as can be seen with US itself. These tailwinds are strong enough that they lift everybody up, even considering the corruption taking its share.

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#63

Post by mejutoco » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:52 PM UTC

tarkin2 wrote: post #35

mejutoco wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you train a dog, you have to give a reward very soon after the desired behavior, otherwise the dog won't associate the reward with the behavior Regarding dog training, one can use a placeholder for the reward. This is useful, for example, if you want to reward a dolphin jumping through a hula, because you will not be able to give the reward at that moment, but for example, you can say "yes!" or use a clicker a…

Have we got to the point where we need an article telling us that slighting people doesn't help their motivation? Perhaps the answer is yes when we also compare a worker's motivation to a dog's motivation seemingly without irony.

I think you responded to the wrong post. I did not suggest or made any of these comparisons or comments. I simply recommended a book about training dogs or other animals, and the clicker method.

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#64

Post by hypeatei » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:54 PM UTC

Maybe I'm a bit jaded, and corporate environments have taken their toll, but I see the employee-manager relationship as adversarial by default. Whether my boss wishes me happy birthday or not doesn't move the needle much. I'm there to contribute as an individual and he's there to answer to his boss about staffing, budgeting, and performance.

Although, I do feel slighted when a manager acknowledges the absurdity of all the corporatisms we hear everyday then proceeds to preach them to everyone and waste time anyway. Like, please, I thought we just agreed this is all fluff.

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#65

Post by kps » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

WillAdams wrote: post #17

The big concept which needs to be included in this discussion is "payslope" --- for an excellent article on this, and an example of a company which handles this well, see: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/h... I have never regretted a purchase from Lee Valley, and highly recommend all of their products.

Lee died about a decade ago; I don't know whether they still have this policy. (One immediate change was that their stores started being open on Sunday.)

In ‘our’ field, HP, under founders Hewlett and Packard, ran into some trouble in 1970 and instituted a “9 day fortnight”: rather than lay anyone off, everyone took a 10% cut in pay and hours.

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#66

Post by dmurray » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

tetha wrote: post #13

aetherson wrote: post #3

On some level the headline is like "yeah, no shit," but the surprising thing is the claimed strength of the effect. 50% absenteeism increase for missing a birthday congratulations? Really?

I'm now somewhat interested in the study to see how they accounted for possible hidden factors. If a team lead or manager spent the time to track birthdays and took time out of their day to have a 10 minute chat with someone on their birthday, they probably exhibit a number of other behaviors that could be summarized as "treating their employees as humans". That's the boss people tend to like to work with and possibl…

This is a study from an elite institution published in a respectable journal in the social sciences. Certainly they took the time to perform a controlled experiment and assigned managers at random to deliver the birthday cards late or on time. That would be cheap to do and minimally invasive for the human subjects.

[Reads abstract]

They didn't? It's a pure observational study that one measure of sloppiness in the organisation correlates with another? What do we pay these guys for?

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#67

Post by tetha » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #12

Lots of “no shit” in these comments makes me wonder how many VP level managers you guys have interacted with. Maybe it’s just my location, but this is one of those things that legitimately NEVER makes it through to upper managers. When they tell their base managers to crack the whip and force them to give the whole “you are not working hard enough, tighten up. Shorter lunches, clock in 5 minutes early, etc” speech to…

> When they tell their base managers to crack the whip and force them to give the whole “you are not working hard enough, tighten up. Shorter lunches, clock in 5 minutes early, etc” speech to the base employees, they will absolutely feel resentment and do LESS work, not more.

The most influential question from team lead trainings over the years has been: Do you trust your employee to want to complete the task and purpose they have, or do you need to control them? There are a few names for this, Theory X and Theory Y mainly.

And don't be snide and just say that the current economy forces you to work due to wages. A lot of people I know would just create their own creative work if they had all the money in the world. So yeah, I think if you frame a persons job and purpose in the company right, you can trust them to work. This may not work in all industries, but in tech it seems to hold.

An example where this is in my experience a good guidance: Someone starts slipping their metrics, whatever those are. Comes in late, is hard to reach remotely. Naturally they should get slapped with the book right? Nah. If you assume they want to work well, the first question should be: Why, what is going on?

In a lot of cases, there will be something going on in their private life they are struggling with. If you help them with that, or at least help them navigate work around this, you will end up with a great team member.

Like one guy on the team recently had some trouble during the last legs of building a house and needed more flexible time. We could've been strict and told him to punch it and take their entire annual vacation to manage that, even if he just needs to be able to jump away for an hour or two here and there. Instead we made sure to schedule simple work for him and have him work with a higher focus on educating his sidekicks, tracked the total time away and then booked it as 3-4 days at the end. Now it's a fun story in the teams lore they are fond of having navigated that, instead of one guy sulking about having lost all of his vacation in that nonsense.

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#68

Post by pavel_lishin » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 3:00 PM UTC

kranner wrote: post #16

leothekim wrote: post #9

I understand the co-authors are research fellows at the Maximegalon Institute of Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious

If only it were Surprisingly Obvious. IME there are a large number of emotionally stunted middle and upper managers that could use a pedigreed reminder that being a jerk at work is not good for anything in the end.

Would the people who need such a reminder actually accept the research, and change their behavior?

Are they even aware of the effects of their behavior?

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#69

Post by drabiega » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 3:01 PM UTC

greenchair wrote: post #61

doubled112 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d take “slightly below average but is generally good to work with and tries hard” over “genius asshole” almost any day. Few projects require the latter. There’s also the problem with how useless so many are at their jobs with no way to be sure until its too late.

mostly agree but the below average try hard is also the one introducing the most bugs so I'm torn on this.

That very much depends on the workplace. I was let go once for being 'slightly below average', because I kept foolishly spending the time to fix things in ways that didn't result in more bugs.

Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less

#70

Post by pavel_lishin » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 3:10 PM UTC

tetha wrote: post #67

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #12

Lots of “no shit” in these comments makes me wonder how many VP level managers you guys have interacted with. Maybe it’s just my location, but this is one of those things that legitimately NEVER makes it through to upper managers. When they tell their base managers to crack the whip and force them to give the whole “you are not working hard enough, tighten up. Shorter lunches, clock in 5 minutes early, etc” speech to…

> When they tell their base managers to crack the whip and force them to give the whole “you are not working hard enough, tighten up. Shorter lunches, clock in 5 minutes early, etc” speech to the base employees, they will absolutely feel resentment and do LESS work, not more. The most influential question from team lead trainings over the years has been: Do you trust your employee to want to complete the task and pur…

> In a lot of cases, there will be something going on in their private life they are struggling with. If you help them with that, or at least help them navigate work around this, you will end up with a great team member.

Note that there already has to be a pretty high level of trust between that employee and their manager for this to work; if I don't feel like I can trust my manager, I will absolutely keep my lips zipped about anything not directly work related.