I just got my annual review and for the 4th year in a row, no changes. I'm still "meeting expectations" but apparently not deserving of even a crumb of the millions in additional profits I've brought in. I am damn sure not going to work as hard going forward when working hard doesn't even lead to a positive outcome. I may not control the scope or even volume of work assigned to me, but I do control the pace and why bother working faster/harder for nothing?
When employees feel slighted, they work less
81–90 of 279 posts
Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 org…
Per abstract it's a "a dynamic difference-in-differences" analysis, which means likely that they see whether the employee behavior changes after the event. But establishing causation with it still requires quite a few assumptions.
PNAS is kinda known for headline grabbing research with at times a bit less rigorous methodology.
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2017/10/04/breaking-p...
> 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.
If the results are true, it would be actually quite expensive because of the drop in productivity. It could also be a bit of a nightmare to push through ethical review.
Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less
#83There's a lot of jeering, I suspect at the headline more than anything, but having documented research can be helpful in changing management behavior. The changes in employee behavior documented here are not ones that managers would easily connect to their past behavior, such as a late birthday recognition. When you train a dog, you have to give a reward very soon after the desired behavior, otherwise the dog won't a…
A lot of this is already known.
If I find out that management is being adversarial to ICs (eg. not offering to pay 75th percentile salaries, giving crap equity offers) I've put pressure to let heads roll. Similarly, if I've seen ICs become adversarial (eg. quiet quitting, overemployed, ignoring brutally honest conversations to upskill, constantly undermining product roadmaps) I've often allowed heads to roll as well.
At least in the Bay Area, the "Netflix Model" has become the norm post-COVID - pay top dollar, but also be open to fire if interests do not align.
What I've noticed in my career as an IC and management is a lot of lower-mid level management are people who were promoted well beyond where their capabilities. To be brutally honest, the stereotypical snarky HNer who is promoted to Staff Eng with an option to become an EM is the worst hire in any organization.
Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less
#84Earlier 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.
> Have we got to the point where we need an article telling us that slighting people doesn't help their motivation?
American culture is unfortunately permeated with examples, and habits, and expectations around punishing the behaviors you'd want to see. I see subtle things like that all the time. So while I doubt anyone who stopped to actually think about the concrete implications of their behavior, more specifically their unconscious habits; wouldn't be able to describe how insulting people, or really, how discouraging people is likely to have a negative outcome. The catch being, most people don't stop to consider anything. Thoes who do, are exceptionally rare.
As an example, someone posted a comment providing context, and encouraging people to be curious and grow their skill set with techniques that will help them with dogs, (and yes, these do translate to humans as well.)
Which invited a negative comment from you attacking people who aren't perfect every single moment of every single day, who might benefit from a reminder that how they treat others matters. Also indirectly attacking the person you replied to.
(See what I mean about the culture of punishing the behavior, you want to see? Or did you intend to discourage curiosity?)
> Perhaps the answer is yes when we also compare a worker's motivation to a dog's motivation seemingly without irony.
You can train a human using the exact same skills you use to train a dog. Just because humans are also, in addition to those able to do a lot more, and learn in an astronomically larger set of ways, doesn't exclude the techniques that work best with dogs. You forget this at your own peril. I.e. if the way you behave wouldn't encourage the behavior you want from a dog well, it sure as hell wont encourage the behavior from a human. All humans, including you, are not that special, get over yourself. rhetorically speaking
Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less
#85Earlier 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.
Technically I believe the dog is the manager in this metaphor.
The length of time between behaviour and reward/punishment is too great. So to train your manager you need to go home straight away.
Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less
#86Conversely, I wonder if employers who feel slighted by those employees, pay and promote them less.
Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less
#87A 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…
I think you'd enjoy reading about the Gervais Principle. It's pretty much what you're talking about.
Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Perhaps it may help to work on your social skills with more intent. People who often find themselves disrespected at work aren't always bad performers but they do tend to have large social blind spots they themselves aren't aware of.
Or maybe, quite a few managers need to work on their social skills. It is genuinely weird that the expectation of emotional and social management always falls on engineer in these debates. Maybe, just maybe, a manager with supposedly higher social skills should be able to manage relationships with engineers better.
Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Perhaps it may help to work on your social skills with more intent. People who often find themselves disrespected at work aren't always bad performers but they do tend to have large social blind spots they themselves aren't aware of.
Why do you jump to the conclusion of parent being the problem? Your comment implicitly accepts that people's social skills can be problematic, but you assume it isn't the manager?
Re: When employees feel slighted, they work less
#90> the retail chain, which has a well-established policy that managers hand-deliver a card and small gift to each employee on their birthday. > The faux pas was never intentional; the managers who were late said they had other priorities. If it's such a well known company policy and you forget that, it is not a small slight at all.
If it’s a known company policy and people know it’s supposed to happen, they’re going to notice when it doesn’t. So it highlights that the managers priorities don’t include you.
Exactly, and even worse, I'm sure the managers remember some people's birthdays.