71–80 of 234 posts
How do you know (asking seriously, since I work alone 99% of the time) when somebody is sexist (or any other ist ) or if he/she is just a generally unpleasant person? Also, I got to say that if I'm in the same room with a woman who has a very visible cleavage I will look into the ceiling to avoid even the vague notion that I'm looking into their breasts.
Why aren't managers graded on retention? If you lose too many people you're penalized or fired.
Microsoft's (in)famous "rank&yank" comes to mind, where the employees of each department were annually scored for performance and lowest 10% were let go. Unfortunately this was copied by quite a few other companies. In this environment, absolute performance is not enough to keep one's employment, only relative performance among peers. Therefore, it is best to work with knuckleheads, easily outperformed, than with a group of geniuses where a constant struggle will exist. Perhaps it's advantageous for the company (doubtful, as even MSFT abandoned this practice) but it's highly destructive to cultures and individual's careers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that results in MBA culture! ::nerd shudders:: It's a source of constant amazement to me that people who will drill incessantly on red-black trees won't put in a modicum of effort to learn even a little bit about the inherently more complicated business of managing people.
Why not both? Get your engineers who want to go into management to get a MBA (regular, part time, or executive). Eng background with a MBA is IMHO one of the best combinations around. Managing people & businesses isn't something you're born with, it's something you learn and train. Just like coding, but sometimes way harder. Full disclaimer: I have a computer engineering undergrad and a MBA, so take my opinion with a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that results in MBA culture! ::nerd shudders:: It's a source of constant amazement to me that people who will drill incessantly on red-black trees won't put in a modicum of effort to learn even a little bit about the inherently more complicated business of managing people.
>It's a source of constant amazement to me that people who will drill incessantly on red-black trees won't put in a modicum of effort to learn even a little bit about the inherently more complicated business of managing people. This isn't really an issue if you promote an engineer to mgmt when they have demonstrated that can manage people, rather than before and assume they can grow.
Protip for all the younger workers out there: HR is not there to protect you or help you. They are there to protect the company. Sometimes protecting the company happens to mean helping you, and sometimes the HR people are good people who look for solutions that makes everyone happy. But don't count on it.
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Or stop promoting engineers to management roles they aren't educated for or socially prepared for.
But that results in MBA culture! ::nerd shudders:: It's a source of constant amazement to me that people who will drill incessantly on red-black trees won't put in a modicum of effort to learn even a little bit about the inherently more complicated business of managing people.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see anything that the manager is doing wrong. We can debate whether the manager is effective at her job, but it seems clear to me this is not an example of sexism. The only citation I can find relevant to the claim of sexism is that she was asked not to wear a tank-top to work. It may very well be that a tank-top is inappropriate attire at Uber's workplace. At IBM and many o…
Easy fix: Mandatory dress codes. Men in suit, with tie from the time you enter the office until the time you leave. Women in suits, pants or skirts. Or go whole hog and require everyone to wear grey coveralls when in office. Institutions with dress codes generally have less BS distractions because the distractions simply can't exist.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that results in MBA culture! ::nerd shudders:: It's a source of constant amazement to me that people who will drill incessantly on red-black trees won't put in a modicum of effort to learn even a little bit about the inherently more complicated business of managing people.
>It's a source of constant amazement to me that people who will drill incessantly on red-black trees won't put in a modicum of effort to learn even a little bit about the inherently more complicated business of managing people. This isn't really an issue if you promote an engineer to mgmt when they have demonstrated that can manage people, rather than before and assume they can grow.
A former employer of mine had a rule that anyone at a "management level" (including engineers of a certain rank, even if they weren't actually managing anyone) had to complete a set of training courses within a certain period of being promoted. As an engineer entering management, I found the courses to be surprisingly useful in terms of understanding and managing people and so did others. Classes like communication, negotiation, basic finance, employment law, etc.
Then HR decided they were useless and stopped offering them. And they went back to the state the GP is complaining about...