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How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

technocrat.net

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Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#71

Post by jodrellblank »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #49

I'd actually like to take a step back from the hate-fest going on in the comments here and evaluate this. Before you downvote me, at least read what I have to say. This email is a classic example of poor communication. It's very clear that the guy is frustrated and is taking it out via an emotional response. However, we don't know the whole story here, do we? From my reading, it sounds like this has been an ongoing p…

I can imagine the frustration of running a large company with thousands of employees and seeing a lack of results, coupled with evidence of employees not spending much time at work.

I just want to shove in that it's not a case of "not much time", employment is a business transaction between adults - a contractually agreed amount of time for an amount of money.

If the employees are putting in the time they and their employer agreed they would, it's not fair or accurate to say it's "not much" time.

If the contract is specified by results instead, then the employer also has no right to say "not much time", only "not good enough results".

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#72

Post by JoachimSchipper »

ScotterC wrote: post #46
dget wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that it asks for backlash - do we actually know what happened? It seems like the company's doing decently, so I'm not sure the students of history will have much to work off of.

More talking about actual history such as 19th century Europe. However this memo is dated as August '06 so we can assume that it happened sometime earlier that summer. From this google finance chart: http://bit.ly/ar1PSo it shows the massive dip the company took in July of the same year. Aside from all that, actions like this will bite you in the ass in one form another. I doubt many visitors to hacker news hold CEO…

Actually, other comments mention 2001.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#73

Post by pyre »

sigzero wrote: post #3

We got this: "Recognizing that many of you may have childcare obligations that may create a personal challenge for you please seek approval from your manager to deviate from the above and don’t allow your personal schedule to take priority over your need to support your team’s efforts to service the customer." A lot of people where I work didn't particularly like the tone of that.

I wonder if the reason that they get voted as a 'great place to work' is because the company consists mostly of people that haven't worked anywhere else (or it's just a comparison to other businesses in the KC area)?

I had someone I knew in college go off to work at Cerner in ~2003, and I remember that at the time they had a fairly good rating as a good place to work, but that most of their new hires were recent grads (at least on the software end of things).

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#74

Post by Dove »

brg wrote: post #54
umjames wrote: post #52

The CEO should be required to go to Kansas City and work alongside the employees who he thinks are slacking off. That includes being in by 8am, staying late every night, and coming in on Saturdays. Everyday, he cannot leave until all of the employees leave, and while he's there he must help do the actual work that needs doing so badly. He cannot leave Kansas City until the productivity levels rise to his liking. Afte…

Have you ever been around senior management of a larger company? Everyone I have met works at least 10 hours a day, and often more. Except for vacation days perhaps, but even then they are still tied to the laptop and phone.

Concur. I've seen upper management at my company doing 70 hour weeks routinely, while their staff meanders along without so much as mandatory overtime. It's a combination of ambition, dedication, different incentives, a tighter identification with the company itself . . . I'd think twice before taking that path in life.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#76

Post by viraptor »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #49

I'd actually like to take a step back from the hate-fest going on in the comments here and evaluate this. Before you downvote me, at least read what I have to say. This email is a classic example of poor communication. It's very clear that the guy is frustrated and is taking it out via an emotional response. However, we don't know the whole story here, do we? From my reading, it sounds like this has been an ongoing p…

Whatever the problem is, I would bet that this memo doesn't solve the problem in any way, just makes it worse. No serious person should ever write "The pizza man should show up at 7:30 PM to feed the starving teams working late." And I seriously mean never.

"We are getting less than 40 hours of work [...]" implies that it's the minimum, so I guess that's what's in the standard employee contract. But "NEVER in my career have I allowed a team which worked for me to think they had a 40 hour job." implies he wants a tired, unmotivated, angry person to do work for him.

What would I do? Take a look at the actual issues. If employees are not at work during the time they should, just because they got used to that - first warn, then after some time find the biggest offender and fire him/her (based on not doing the time agreed in contract) to show the rule is executed. But I don't believe that's the reason - there's no point in holding a meeting late at night, because people will just sleep until that time, or do something completely unrelated. You cannot make anyone do work. Just for fun - you can try the most trivial method - 5 why-s. Try to think of 1 scenario that starts with "bad results" and is fixable at step 3/4 by forcing employees to stay at work for additional time. (in most cases you'll find bad project organisation, strange scheduling policies, conflicts of interests, etc.)

If they don't want to stay the standard hours at work, there's an underlying problem somewhere. If they don't want to stay additional hours at work, there's nothing you can do legally, apart from providing incentives (and that still doesn't guaranty that they will do any more work).

Also the guy SHOUTS in the email. Outside of internet, if you have to start shouting to make your point, you lose respect / have weak communication skills / you're probably wrong - it doesn't help you win the argument anyways.

Why do I think I could do better? Because I can identify a list of things that would make me leave the company asap, if my manager was acting that way, which is exactly the opposite of what he wants to achieve.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#78

Post by barrkel »

anamax wrote: post #60
barrkel wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you didn't present evidence that he didn't hurt his company. You presented evidence that he didn't hurt the company so badly that it didn't grow, but not that he didn't hurt the company.

> You presented evidence that he didn't hurt the company so badly that it didn't grow, but not that he didn't hurt the company. Since no one has presented evidence showing that he hurt his company.... In my book, you don't get to complain about the quality of someone else's evidence unless your evidence is better. And no, "self-evident" doesn't count. YMMV.

At the risk of getting meta, I was complaining about the quality of the evidence for the assertion. I never made any assertions about the company suffering in any way because of this guy.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#80

Post by blantonl »

wildmXranat wrote: post #45
abstractbill wrote: post #4

From the comments: My sister used to work for a large multinational that pressured people to come in on Saturdays. The employees would come in but they would work on personal tasks like paying bills and balancing their checkbooks. It was all for appearance and it just pissed off the employees. She left the company after this pressure started. Part of her Saturday "work" was looking for a new job. In my experience thi…

My first programming job after graduation had a paid Saturday requirement that crept in a couple of months after I started. I think I was the only one that said no to it. I didn't even think twice about the decision and Mondays felt a lot better from my perspective.

And you are no longer there.
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