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Want to be a leader? Wash the Dishes When Nobody Else Will.

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Re: Want to be a leader? Wash the Dishes When Nobody Else Will.

#81

Post by jarek »

jasonlotito wrote: post #80
jarek wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just my millenial entitlement, but that strikes me as a bad strategy. Unless the business was a cleaning or maintenance company, cleaning the bathroom seems far removed from anything relevant to my work and is in essence busywork. Questions that immediately spring into mind: is this some weird attempt at saving money by having employees do both their job and cleaning? Is this supposed to be some hazing rit…

> Maybe it's just my millenial entitlement, but that strikes me as a bad strategy. I don't know if has anything to do with your "millenial" (seriously, you use this word to describe yourself?) entitlement, but it's not a bad strategy for both you or the company. You don't want to work for a company like that, and they don't want employees like you. Extrapolate that into numerous other "First Day/First Week/First Mont…

> seriously, you use this word to describe yourself?

No. That was tongue in cheek. Does anyone refer to their entitlement seriously?

Re: Want to be a leader? Wash the Dishes When Nobody Else Will.

#82

Post by joe_the_user »

edw519 wrote: post #51
jarek wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just my millenial entitlement, but that strikes me as a bad strategy. Unless the business was a cleaning or maintenance company, cleaning the bathroom seems far removed from anything relevant to my work and is in essence busywork. Questions that immediately spring into mind: is this some weird attempt at saving money by having employees do both their job and cleaning? Is this supposed to be some hazing rit…

Did you understand the grandparent? This had nothing to do with relevance, busywork, hazing, saving money, or evaluating talent. It had a single purpose: to determine willingness to do an undesirable job. That's it. Which, interestingly, is just as important in a software start-up as it was in my father's business so many years ago.

It had a single purpose: to determine willingness to do an undesirable job.

Yes but consider that the undesirable job in your example is assigned arbitrarily by the boss. This might conceivably test a person's willingness to "do what's necessary" - to keep going when the going gets rough. But it just as well might test a willingness to mindlessly labor through whatever BS the boss throws at them. If someone aims to hire people with latter attitude, that someone shouldn't be surprised if those people display a lack of initiative.

Re: Want to be a leader? Wash the Dishes When Nobody Else Will.

#83

Post by scott_s »

jarek wrote: post #61
alnayyir wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevance is besides the point, you're paid to work. Your job title isn't some kind of license to refuse work you don't want to do. You keep trying to frame this as being an issue of relevancy when really it's that you're simply not eager enough to get dirty like edw's father wanted out of his people. You tell me to clean the bathroom on my first day, I'll ask where the scrub and bottle of 409 are. Now if we're talki…

I am not eager to clean bathrooms on my first day as a software developer. Relevance to my job title, which is important to me for both self-fulfillment and career management reasons, is a big part of why. I am eager to create software, and I understand this includes the mentally dirty parts. If I was eager to get physically dirty I'd go and make more money for an easier job at the tar sands. You want someone who wil…

It's Friday evening. You and your team will be at the office through the weekend to finish a release. The toilet backed up, spilling onto the bathroom floor. The building's cleaning staff will not be around until Monday, and there is no protocol for emergencies. Will you clean the bathroom?

What I have done is contrive a plausible scenario where cleaning the bathroom is something that just has to get done in order for you to fulfill your stated role as a software developer. I agree with edw519's point and that of the article author's: leaders get done what has to get done regardless of what it is. Sometimes that means crawling around on your hands and knees stringing along ethernet cords. Sometimes that means implementing boring but necessary infrastructure code. Sometimes that means cleaning the bathroom.

Re: Want to be a leader? Wash the Dishes When Nobody Else Will.

#84

Post by curtiswashngton »

It sounds like great advice, and it probably is in the right situation. I can tell you that at my current company I behaved in this way for years, and metaphorically, and sometimes literally, washed the dishes and went above and beyond to end up being pushed aside by office politics. When you treat the company as if it were yours or you were its CEO don't forget that it is not yours and you are not the CEO, otherwise you'll be in for a big wake up kick in the butt...

Re: Want to be a leader? Wash the Dishes When Nobody Else Will.

#86

Post by cabose07 »

jarek wrote: post #61
alnayyir wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevance is besides the point, you're paid to work. Your job title isn't some kind of license to refuse work you don't want to do. You keep trying to frame this as being an issue of relevancy when really it's that you're simply not eager enough to get dirty like edw's father wanted out of his people. You tell me to clean the bathroom on my first day, I'll ask where the scrub and bottle of 409 are. Now if we're talki…

I am not eager to clean bathrooms on my first day as a software developer. Relevance to my job title, which is important to me for both self-fulfillment and career management reasons, is a big part of why. I am eager to create software, and I understand this includes the mentally dirty parts. If I was eager to get physically dirty I'd go and make more money for an easier job at the tar sands. You want someone who wil…

Yea seriously, maybe if I was right out of college I would consider it but I seriously doubt that. My talents are better utilized doing other things and unless you are paying me a considerable amount of money you can clean the bathroom yourself. I happen to work for a company in the top 10 best places to work for in IT and something like that would never ever be expected or asked period, not even on a principle base.

Re: Want to be a leader? Wash the Dishes When Nobody Else Will.

#87

Post by jarek »

scott_s wrote: post #83
jarek wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not eager to clean bathrooms on my first day as a software developer. Relevance to my job title, which is important to me for both self-fulfillment and career management reasons, is a big part of why. I am eager to create software, and I understand this includes the mentally dirty parts. If I was eager to get physically dirty I'd go and make more money for an easier job at the tar sands. You want someone who wil…

It's Friday evening. You and your team will be at the office through the weekend to finish a release. The toilet backed up, spilling onto the bathroom floor. The building's cleaning staff will not be around until Monday, and there is no protocol for emergencies. Will you clean the bathroom? What I have done is contrive a plausible scenario where cleaning the bathroom is something that just has to get done in order fo…

> Will you clean the bathroom?

Yes. (Though I better be getting paid overtime for that weekend work if the schedule slip isn't the dev team's fault.)

There is a large difference between cleaning a bathroom in an emergency on a Friday evening and cleaning a bathroom because the boss wants to test you on a Monday morning.

Are you assuming that just because someone cleaned it when their boss forced them to as condition of continued employment, they will step up and volunteer to do it in the future rather than try to pawn it off on someone else? Are you assuming the inverse is also true?

This has very little to do with leadership, by the way.

--

edit: If I come in for my first day on a Monday morning and the boss tells me that the team is scrambling to finish up a release, the toilet is backed up, and the cleaning staff won't be here until the evening, I'll look at him weird and maybe not think highly of his organizational skills, but I'd be much more likely to help than in the case of being asked to clean just to see if I am willing to put up with shit.

Re: Want to be a leader? Wash the Dishes When Nobody Else Will.

#88

Post by shasta »

Silhouette wrote: post #72
grellas wrote: post #48

Want to be a great leader? Work hard to develop extraordinary skills. Become an independent thinker and have the courage to follow your ideas. Show respect to others and never think more highly of yourself than you ought. Avoid bad habits of sloth, dissipation, dishonesty, and other qualities that would cause others to lose respect for you. Set goals that challenge you to do your best and follow diligently after them…

I'm with you on most of that, but I think this point is a little dangerous: > Avoid bad habits of sloth, Willingness to pitch in when hard work really is called for is a necessary and valuable trait, of course. However, working hard when you don't have to is wasteful, and too many people confuse the two. Sometimes, a natural inclination to be "lazy" is a lot like trying to avoid unnecessary work by being smart. I wou…

Being seen doing the dishes obviously made an impression on at least one employee. Maybe time optimization isn't the only factor?

Re: Want to be a leader? Wash the Dishes When Nobody Else Will.

#89

Post by sloak »

VladRussian wrote: post #63
sloak wrote: post #45

Reminds me about the story of Netflix CEO. From http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/0... [... Huffington coaxed Hastings to talk about leadership -- and one early experience that informed his leadership style. Hastings recalled how, as a 25-year-old software programmer, he would stay up all night, propelled by coffee. He'd leave an array of mugs on his desk. Once a week, he would discover the c…

'You do so much for this company, this is the only thing I can do for you.' Typical lie of a boss. He could have given him more options or a promotion for example.

I think it's a bit of a misquote. I've heard it as the CEO saying something like "since you're under a lot of time press to get the stuff out the door in a week, and I don't know how to code, this is the only thing I can do for you right now"

Re: Want to be a leader? Wash the Dishes When Nobody Else Will.

#90

Post by stoney »

Silhouette wrote: post #72
grellas wrote: post #48

Want to be a great leader? Work hard to develop extraordinary skills. Become an independent thinker and have the courage to follow your ideas. Show respect to others and never think more highly of yourself than you ought. Avoid bad habits of sloth, dissipation, dishonesty, and other qualities that would cause others to lose respect for you. Set goals that challenge you to do your best and follow diligently after them…

I'm with you on most of that, but I think this point is a little dangerous: > Avoid bad habits of sloth, Willingness to pitch in when hard work really is called for is a necessary and valuable trait, of course. However, working hard when you don't have to is wasteful, and too many people confuse the two. Sometimes, a natural inclination to be "lazy" is a lot like trying to avoid unnecessary work by being smart. I wou…

I think the uses of "sloth" and "lazy" here are quite importantly different. The idea of working smart by being lazy, really means (at least to me) coming up with a better solution than the obvious hard work, time consuming approach, then going off and doing something better with the time that you have saved. Sloth implies to me sitting around doing nothing.

So: general sloth=bad;lazy approach to some tasks=good when it frees your time to do more important stuff.

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