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Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

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Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#81

Post by onesixtythree »

eitally wrote: post #64
d23 wrote: post #20

> Companies don't need to go so far as the well-known Google 20 percent time A bit of a digression here. I love that people think the idea that letting employees spend a measly 20% of their time deciding what they should be working on is somehow an extreme idea. What portion of your typical day would you honestly say is devoted to solid, in-the-flow work? After all the meeting, context switches, random interruptions,…

You're not wrong, but you don't quite understand how 20% time works in practice. It's a formal way to recruit part-time help on unrelated projects, and it's recruited for and tracked in exactly the same way using the same systems as normal jobs & normal performance management. It's a fantastic way for people at Google to seek out learning opportunities or places to participate outside their normal team/group/dept/BU.…

Ugh. Google's idea of "normal performance management" is what the civilized world calls "fascistic". It's pretty disgusting that, in the 21st century, execs are OK with a performance review system in which rape slang (threats like "take you into the Perf room" and people with sub 3.0 scores being called "pillow biters") is the norm.

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#82

Post by cpeterso »

tboyd47 wrote: post #58
georgeglue1 wrote: post #24

Sorry for another negative post. As a PM, the example stated seems a bit absurd and definitely not the environment for me. A transparent and healthy company culture lets people (briefly) reason and talk about projects/strengths. There shouldn't be some sort of implicit beauty contest, rewarding aggressive employee who are underloaded. There must be better ways to develop talent. The method listed also creates a lot o…

Agreed. You really hit the nail on the head when you said "aggressive." This strategy seems like it would create an artificially competitive zero-sum game within the company where employees who should be working together are competing to be the golden volunteer for the boss. I think it would be better to always have fewer tasks than people (not more tasks, like the author seems to suggest), but establish high-level g…

And if there is important work that has not been staffed with a person, then was it really important in the first place?

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#83

Post by cpeterso »

An alternate take on work voids and volunteering:

  Asking for volunteers (or implicitly relying on volunteers) is one of many 
  structures companies can choose to allocate work. Like many other minimally-
  structured structures, it tends to reinforce and amplify larger cultural
  inequities.
http://sasha.wtf/relying-on-volunteering-is-unfair/

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#84

Post by falcolas »

vonmoltke wrote: post #72
eitally wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong, but you don't quite understand how 20% time works in practice. It's a formal way to recruit part-time help on unrelated projects, and it's recruited for and tracked in exactly the same way using the same systems as normal jobs & normal performance management. It's a fantastic way for people at Google to seek out learning opportunities or places to participate outside their normal team/group/dept/BU.…

> at least within tech, I think that "40 hour, strictly scheduled workweek" has been gone for several years now. Sounds like you have never worked for a government contractor.

I haven't worked at a software development company where they didn't have an expectation of 40 hours and a set of "core hours" where you had to be in the office or available.

Sadly, I think we have to accept that the appearance of productivity (butt in chair, open office visibility) is more important than actual productivity most of the time.

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#85

Post by gluggymug »

WalterBright wrote: post #49

In my corporate experience, only doing what you're told to by your manager is the route to mediocre raises and rare promotions. Larger raises and faster promotions come from identifying problems and solving them, i.e. not needing to be micro-managed.

In my corporate experience, it depends on the problem. Identifying problems and solving them is great until the problems you identify are in the realm of your manager's responsibility.

Don't show too much initiative. It threatens the hierarchy.

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#86

Post by YZF »

asgard1024 wrote: post #18
YZF wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nobody steps up then it's quite likely that work never needed to get done in the first place. win-win as long as it's a learning experience for all involved. It's definitely a problem if you force a team or a person into a certain pattern and then change the rules without telling. For example you may have punished someone for taking the initiative in the past and now you try to intentionally create a vacuum. In th…

> If nobody steps up then it's quite likely that work never needed to get done in the first place. Seriously? Consider this: You have all people tied up in work for one month. A customer issue comes up. Who should step up to take it? Because you're not seriously suggesting it should rot there one month, do you? It's a classical coordination problem (and that's why preemptive scheduling was invented). I, as a develope…

> A customer issue comes up. Who should step up to take it? Because you're not seriously suggesting it should rot there one month, do you?

That's why you talk to each other. Unless the team is huge than figuring out who works on something shouldn't take a long time.

> the low priority work doesn't get done at all.

That's great. Low priority stuff shouldn't get done ahead of high priority stuff.

IMO you're over-complicating some things and over-simplifying others. There is no mythical project manager who can tell your items 1-4 in anything but the most trivial of projects. That's why almost any complex tech project I've seen managed by Gantt charts and project managers (and I've seen lots) never meets their schedule. Once you let go of the illusion that you can actually manage technology projects that way you'll find things get a lot simpler.

Here's what happens in real life with your items 1-4:

(1) The priority and require latency are often misjudged by the project manager. In technology project project managers often don't have the right domain knowledge to be able to judge these. So they may prioritize some feature ahead of another in a way that makes it more difficult to build the system.

(2) How long things are going to take is impossible to judge in an R&D scenario. Only projects that are very similar to ones you've done in the past can be estimated with any certainty. In practice most project managers will make an estimate that fits what he's asked to deliver on because he is anchored to that.

(3) Requires domain knowledge that the project manager doesn't typically have. Even individuals in the team may not have it. The team as a whole can usually figure those out by discussion. In real world projects managed by project managers dependencies are discovered when work is blocked due to them more often than predicted.

(4) This is also difficult. What tends to happen is the project manager will have some thoughts about who prefers what kind of work. Sometimes they'll be wrong. People get upset. People leave. It's easier for people to work on what they like in a less tightly managed environment.

A lot of this is cultural. In some cultures and for some people being self managed is extremely difficult. I've worked with people who will stress out if they're not told what to do. However, I do believe the best teams consist of people who are more self managed.

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#87

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

codeonfire wrote: post #17

Ugg. I'm sorry about being negative but here are some protips: 1. If a manager leaves work unassigned and you pick it up, prepare to have a LOT more work dumped on you in the future for no reward. 2. If you pretend to be a manager with hopes of being made a manager, all that you will accomplish is you are going to end up doing your job AND your bosses job. Your boss will look like a hero to his/her peers. You'll kill…

I'm going to say that it depends on the manager. What I've found is that volunteering to take on unassigned work usually resulted in me having first choice at new tasks so I ended up generally working only on stuff I found interesting.

Now, I will admit that I had a very good manager at the time, but I've seen the same thing play out similarly elsewhere.

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#88

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

loopbit wrote: post #44
kabouseng wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may, here is some of my protips: - The best route up is hitching your wagon to your bosses wagon. So yes doing some of his work will make him look like a hero, which will get him promoted, and he'll think who is his most valuable / productive underling, which will get you promoted. Hopefully you doing some of his work free's up his time to be more productive in other areas. If your boss is a lazy PHB (Dilbert),…

Maybe I've had more than my share of bad bosses, but I don't really agree with you here. I must say, also, that in my experience, it does depend on the company size, culture and abilities of said managers more often than not (big, hierarchical companies tend to be worse at this kind of thing, also, banking and financial, not sure why). - A good manager will notice, and appreciate, your effort. But promote you? You ar…

In the words of a good manager I used to know: "I want us (the company)to win. Whether you work for me or someone else here, I don't care. I just don't want you working for the competition."

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#89

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

saiya-jin wrote: post #43
kabouseng wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may, here is some of my protips: - The best route up is hitching your wagon to your bosses wagon. So yes doing some of his work will make him look like a hero, which will get him promoted, and he'll think who is his most valuable / productive underling, which will get you promoted. Hopefully you doing some of his work free's up his time to be more productive in other areas. If your boss is a lazy PHB (Dilbert),…

It is for sure one way, but you have no idea how long it will take till somebody "picks you up". It might take few months or 5 years (or more), draining you of a lot of energy and time that you could spent actually having a life. Plus some people see good performers around as competition, depends how company is structured (ie if your manager is on same position/level you will be once promoted). My example - I have co…

you have no idea how long it will take till somebody "picks you up".

This is exactly right. It's also exactly why you don't wait for someone to guide your career: you do it yourself. If you want to work for someone specific, why not just go to them and say so?

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#90

Post by bitL »

WalterBright wrote: post #74
bitL wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large raises and faster promotions come from your perceived value and nowadays is mostly achieved by networking and politics. Identifying problems and solving them is often a threat to all levels above you, often managers play games by introducing inefficiencies and then pretending to solve them slowly, keeping their perceived utility and visibility high, and you identifying and solving some of these poses an existen…

In my experience, when layoff times came around, the managers would get rid of those they didn't want any more, and it was always the deadwood, not the high performers. I infer they viewed the deadwood as much more of a threat.

I've seen grade-A employees being kicked out during layoffs and deadwood remaining, so YMMV. A lot of it depends on the company culture and on the personal goals of managers and their ability to sell whatever they intend to their higher ups.
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