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Really? You aren’t able to determine out of the people you work with if they are performing or not? Sure you might not be able to determine who the bottom 10% i

Really? You aren’t able to determine out of the people you work with if they are performing or not? Sure you might not be able to determine who the bottom 10% is in the company, but you know who is pulling their weight and who is not of the people you work with.

kasey_junk 9y ago
I’m able to determine when someone is struggling with a task or succeeding at it, but I’ve never seen a measure that would allow me to holistically rank them across the many & varied things we ask our colleagues to contribute to.
- danieltillett 9y ago
  Yes that is the problem. Everyone in the company knows collectively who the performers and non-performers are, but there is no way for that information to be captured in a useful form by management. Attempting to do so ends up with disasters like rank and yank.
  - kasey_junk 9y ago
    I’m suggesting that “performer” and “not performer” is entirely based on the context. Someone who is useless at debugging may be brilliant at theory research or what have you. Very few people are all the time performers or non-performers in every category. This seems so obviously true to me, I find it weird to suggest that the problem is a line of communication with management. The issue is that ranking people on a single dimension of good/bad is a dumb exercise.
    - danieltillett 9y ago
      I am not sure where I suggested ranking anyone on a single dimension or that the problem was communication with management? What I have suggested is the data for ranking is contained within the employees of the company, but that it is not accessible to management.
      - dmoy 9y ago
        k: I can't rank my coworkers. d: you can't identify low (bottom 10%) performers? k: I can tell if someone is struggling at one task, but can't rank people on everything they do d: yes, everyone knows who the low performers are but the can't communicate that to management k: no, I'm saying I can only rank on one metric. Few people do bad or good in all metrics d: when did I say one metric? The point is you didn't say one metric, but k is pointing out that people have a hard time judging their coworkers as a whole, because there's so many varied tasks going on.
        danieltillett 9y ago
        You paraphrased k pretty well, but you missed my point. I didn't say people can judge their coworker as a whole, just that the information on performance is known to the employees as a whole. Each person in a company know something about the performance of some aspect of each of the colleagues they work with. When taken in aggregate this information provides a very good idea of the ranking of employees by whatever metric you want to choose. The problem is this information is inaccessible to management.
closeparen 9y ago
There are certainly people I’d avoid because I don’t like them much socially, but no, I can’t identify anyone who “isn’t pulling their weight.”
- danieltillett 9y ago
  You are very lucky or you have a pretty low standard :)
  - foepys 9y ago
    Or, maybe, just maybe, you cannot either. Assessing people's value to a company is very hard because there are so many factorsthat you often don't even notice when you aren't someone's boss. Some people have amazing people skills that lift the mood in the entire office. Others are grumpy but deliver high quality code or have ideas that save the company millions of dollars. Are you following you colleagues around 100% of the time?
    - danieltillett 9y ago
      Maybe I have just been unlucky, but I have worked with many people who have not pulled their weight. In most cases management eventually acted, but there was often quite a bit of time between when I first noticed and when they were fired.

kasey_junk 9y ago

I’m able to determine when someone is struggling with a task or succeeding at it, but I’ve never seen a measure that would allow me to holistically rank them across the many & varied things we ask our colleagues to contribute to.

danieltillett 9y ago
Yes that is the problem. Everyone in the company knows collectively who the performers and non-performers are, but there is no way for that information to be captured in a useful form by management. Attempting to do so ends up with disasters like rank and yank.
- kasey_junk 9y ago
  I’m suggesting that “performer” and “not performer” is entirely based on the context. Someone who is useless at debugging may be brilliant at theory research or what have you. Very few people are all the time performers or non-performers in every category. This seems so obviously true to me, I find it weird to suggest that the problem is a line of communication with management. The issue is that ranking people on a single dimension of good/bad is a dumb exercise.
  - danieltillett 9y ago
    I am not sure where I suggested ranking anyone on a single dimension or that the problem was communication with management? What I have suggested is the data for ranking is contained within the employees of the company, but that it is not accessible to management.
    - dmoy 9y ago
      k: I can't rank my coworkers. d: you can't identify low (bottom 10%) performers? k: I can tell if someone is struggling at one task, but can't rank people on everything they do d: yes, everyone knows who the low performers are but the can't communicate that to management k: no, I'm saying I can only rank on one metric. Few people do bad or good in all metrics d: when did I say one metric? The point is you didn't say one metric, but k is pointing out that people have a hard time judging their coworkers as a whole, because there's so many varied tasks going on.
      - danieltillett 9y ago
        You paraphrased k pretty well, but you missed my point. I didn't say people can judge their coworker as a whole, just that the information on performance is known to the employees as a whole. Each person in a company know something about the performance of some aspect of each of the colleagues they work with. When taken in aggregate this information provides a very good idea of the ranking of employees by whatever metric you want to choose. The problem is this information is inaccessible to management.

closeparen 9y ago

There are certainly people I’d avoid because I don’t like them much socially, but no, I can’t identify anyone who “isn’t pulling their weight.”

danieltillett 9y ago
You are very lucky or you have a pretty low standard :)
- foepys 9y ago
  Or, maybe, just maybe, you cannot either. Assessing people's value to a company is very hard because there are so many factorsthat you often don't even notice when you aren't someone's boss. Some people have amazing people skills that lift the mood in the entire office. Others are grumpy but deliver high quality code or have ideas that save the company millions of dollars. Are you following you colleagues around 100% of the time?
  - danieltillett 9y ago
    Maybe I have just been unlucky, but I have worked with many people who have not pulled their weight. In most cases management eventually acted, but there was often quite a bit of time between when I first noticed and when they were fired.