5 ms·

This is a great observation and I can support your idea with some support from my own experience. I used to work at a large corporation who had a ton of middle

This is a great observation and I can support your idea with some support from my own experience. I used to work at a large corporation who had a ton of middle management. For a few years people had the ability to work from home in an emergency, but it wasn't something normal and you were expected to be in the office otherwise. At this point, people were working from home less than 2% of the time. Then we got a new manager, who was a huge promoter of "ROWE" or Results Only Work Environment. within 6 months, 90% of the office were working from home 90-95% of the time. I used to come in on Monday's and the office would be empty, dead, not a peep and where six months ago, we had 15-20 developers working, we now had one or two. You seriously could have mistaken the office as being on holiday - it was crazy. As such, the middle managers suddenly had a lot less to do. Since results were all that mattered, their jobs of micro-managing all the daily/weekly/monthly metrics they were following and tracking and emailing developers pretty much went out the window. Three months later, 5 managers either quit or were laid off because ROWE made their jobs essentially obsolete. The funny part is the manager who was all about ROWE ran into some roadblocks for his other initiatives and left shortly thereafter (he lasted just over a year). Once he left, upper management quickly revoked ROWE (even though it had been incredibly successful and raised production 11%) and required people to be in the office 5 days a week unless it was for an emergency.

magic_beans 10y ago
I am AMAZED there were such dramatic changes in such a short time! And even more amazed that ROWE was revoked.
- at-fates-hands 10y ago
  It was revoked after the manager who got it in place left after rubbing a few executives the wrong way. He had a lot of other positive things he was trying to do (like implement agile on a staunch old school waterfall company) and after he left, a lot of developers felt it was upper managements way to get back at the developer team since they had increased quotas so high developers started leaving and production was falling or leveling off. It was an easy way for the executives to say, "See what ROWE got us? Production is down and turn over is increasing. See? This doesn't work and the developers are abusing it by working from home too much and missing their goals." It pissed a lot of people off when then revoked it and more people started quitting in droves - and people who had been there 10+ years. I got a good taste of what were the corporate politics at its worst.
dudul 10y ago
Interesting anecdote. Can you maybe provide details about this "raised production 11%"? How was this measured? I'm baffled to see that they would revoke the policy if it was so successful and removed useless positions.
- pkaye 10y ago
  Yeah if it raised production 11% and 5 managers were no longer needed, that would be a substantial savings. Why would upper management revert from ROWE?
  - outworlder 10y ago
    Lobbying from the remaining middle management?
  - Sacho 10y ago
    One reason would be an assumption that ROWE requires a manager like the person that quit to maintain it, and without him, the production would drop through the floor. Upper management were conservatively rolling back to what worked before him.
  - maxxxxx 10y ago
    I think it requires more skillful management. How do you measure results? It's much easier to count the hours people spend in the office or how often they repeat a predefined process even if that process is inefficient.
- at-fates-hands 10y ago
  The company produced around 3-4,000 websites a year. Developers had a monthly quota. If you didn't make quota two months in a row, you got put on a PIP (performance improvement plan). If you didn't make quota the next three months in a row, you were let go. It was a total meat grinder to say the least. The increase in productivity was directly related to the increase in quotas month over month. It started at 18 sites per month, then was elevated 4 months in a row until it got to 22 and then more and more people started missing the quota, so they backed it down after developers started leaving, or just gave up. Thus, you had an increase in production while upper management essentially found the breaking point of the team, then rest the quota right under that level. I think upper management thought by giving us something like ROWE, we could continue to burn the candle at each ends so to speak, and not have our managers breathing down our backs about metrics and still make quota since we could work at home at our own pace and on the hours of our choosing. One of the developers surmised it was because they figured if everybody was out of the office and at their homes - we wouldn't talk so much to each other to figure out how really bad it was.
ams6110 10y ago
I can counter that with my own anecdote, this one from a large university setting, when somehow almost organically a large number of staff began "working" from home. At first it was a couple of people, and as others noticed that there were more and more people not in the office, they opted out as well. Productivity went through the floor. Nothing got done. Nobody could get in touch with anyone. After a while the mandate went out, almost apologetically, that people would actually need to work at the office unless prior approval from their supervisor was obtained. Of course the work atmosphere was pretty dysfunctional to begin with (the secure setting of a university job attracts people who don't like to work very hard) but it was rather interesting to watch it play out.
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  That's where trust comes in. For remote work you need people who are self motivated. I see it as an amplifier. Motivated people often become more productive. Unmotivated people become less productive.
S4M 10y ago
I honestly find this difficult to believe, looks like fake to me.
swampthing 10y ago
I think I missed a step somewhere - why did the remote work cause the metrics to go out the window? Or were the metrics just tied to face time(!)?
- at-fates-hands 10y ago
  Once we really ramped up production and quotas for the developers, all upper management wanted were sites to be done and out the door. Hence, every month became a "production push". The managers work at the time was basically to monitor all the daily metrics like: 1 - how many sites did you get done yesterday? 2 - how many sites are in the queue? 3 - what was your QA defect rate? (this was eventually given to an off shore team, so we were no longer responsible for our own defects, which was totally bizarre to me) 4 - How close to your monthly goal were you? 5 - where were you with your professional development goals? 6 - what percentage of your goal were "refreshes" or sites that were re-designed and revamped? There were a ton more I can't remember right now, but those were sent out in a daily email, in a list, to show were you ranked with your fellow developers. It was very outside sales like, so this really backfired on how developers took it. Most were very "fuck this, this shit is stupid" and performed really poorly under pressure and being micromanaged every day. So once the only thing that mattered was just pumping sites out regardless of quality, then all the metrics became useless and the emails and micromanaging stopped. You were still handed a huge quota to hit every month though and many developers were burning out, getting put on PIPS and even without all the micromanaging, it was still a meat grinder.

magic_beans 10y ago

I am AMAZED there were such dramatic changes in such a short time! And even more amazed that ROWE was revoked.

at-fates-hands 10y ago
It was revoked after the manager who got it in place left after rubbing a few executives the wrong way. He had a lot of other positive things he was trying to do (like implement agile on a staunch old school waterfall company) and after he left, a lot of developers felt it was upper managements way to get back at the developer team since they had increased quotas so high developers started leaving and production was falling or leveling off. It was an easy way for the executives to say, "See what ROWE got us? Production is down and turn over is increasing. See? This doesn't work and the developers are abusing it by working from home too much and missing their goals." It pissed a lot of people off when then revoked it and more people started quitting in droves - and people who had been there 10+ years. I got a good taste of what were the corporate politics at its worst.

dudul 10y ago

Interesting anecdote. Can you maybe provide details about this "raised production 11%"? How was this measured? I'm baffled to see that they would revoke the policy if it was so successful and removed useless positions.

pkaye 10y ago
Yeah if it raised production 11% and 5 managers were no longer needed, that would be a substantial savings. Why would upper management revert from ROWE?
- outworlder 10y ago
  Lobbying from the remaining middle management?
- Sacho 10y ago
  One reason would be an assumption that ROWE requires a manager like the person that quit to maintain it, and without him, the production would drop through the floor. Upper management were conservatively rolling back to what worked before him.
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  I think it requires more skillful management. How do you measure results? It's much easier to count the hours people spend in the office or how often they repeat a predefined process even if that process is inefficient.
at-fates-hands 10y ago
The company produced around 3-4,000 websites a year. Developers had a monthly quota. If you didn't make quota two months in a row, you got put on a PIP (performance improvement plan). If you didn't make quota the next three months in a row, you were let go. It was a total meat grinder to say the least. The increase in productivity was directly related to the increase in quotas month over month. It started at 18 sites per month, then was elevated 4 months in a row until it got to 22 and then more and more people started missing the quota, so they backed it down after developers started leaving, or just gave up. Thus, you had an increase in production while upper management essentially found the breaking point of the team, then rest the quota right under that level. I think upper management thought by giving us something like ROWE, we could continue to burn the candle at each ends so to speak, and not have our managers breathing down our backs about metrics and still make quota since we could work at home at our own pace and on the hours of our choosing. One of the developers surmised it was because they figured if everybody was out of the office and at their homes - we wouldn't talk so much to each other to figure out how really bad it was.

ams6110 10y ago

I can counter that with my own anecdote, this one from a large university setting, when somehow almost organically a large number of staff began "working" from home. At first it was a couple of people, and as others noticed that there were more and more people not in the office, they opted out as well. Productivity went through the floor. Nothing got done. Nobody could get in touch with anyone. After a while the mandate went out, almost apologetically, that people would actually need to work at the office unless prior approval from their supervisor was obtained. Of course the work atmosphere was pretty dysfunctional to begin with (the secure setting of a university job attracts people who don't like to work very hard) but it was rather interesting to watch it play out.

maxxxxx 10y ago
That's where trust comes in. For remote work you need people who are self motivated. I see it as an amplifier. Motivated people often become more productive. Unmotivated people become less productive.

S4M 10y ago

I honestly find this difficult to believe, looks like fake to me.

swampthing 10y ago

I think I missed a step somewhere - why did the remote work cause the metrics to go out the window? Or were the metrics just tied to face time(!)?

at-fates-hands 10y ago
Once we really ramped up production and quotas for the developers, all upper management wanted were sites to be done and out the door. Hence, every month became a "production push". The managers work at the time was basically to monitor all the daily metrics like: 1 - how many sites did you get done yesterday? 2 - how many sites are in the queue? 3 - what was your QA defect rate? (this was eventually given to an off shore team, so we were no longer responsible for our own defects, which was totally bizarre to me) 4 - How close to your monthly goal were you? 5 - where were you with your professional development goals? 6 - what percentage of your goal were "refreshes" or sites that were re-designed and revamped? There were a ton more I can't remember right now, but those were sent out in a daily email, in a list, to show were you ranked with your fellow developers. It was very outside sales like, so this really backfired on how developers took it. Most were very "fuck this, this shit is stupid" and performed really poorly under pressure and being micromanaged every day. So once the only thing that mattered was just pumping sites out regardless of quality, then all the metrics became useless and the emails and micromanaging stopped. You were still handed a huge quota to hit every month though and many developers were burning out, getting put on PIPS and even without all the micromanaging, it was still a meat grinder.