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> But be ready to prove it. How do you prove that an employee took two weeks to find a bug that should have taken one day to find? How do you prove that writi

> But be ready to prove it. How do you prove that an employee took two weeks to find a bug that should have taken one day to find? How do you prove that writing a domain-specific language was a bad decision compared to defining a complex XML schema? How do you prove that an engineer is bad at explaining technical concepts?

giantsloth 9y ago
General consensus amongst the developers that work directly with the person being investigated. It's pretty easy. Head butting with poor managers and broken company structures with ZERO recourse is the problem. The strawman you're putting up is not.
ginko 9y ago
Which side are you on?
- bgirard 9y ago
  Discussing both sides of an idea is acceptable. Picking a side is not a requirement.
- cmalloc 9y ago
  I don't think the grandparent's point is an issue of sides. It's more of a problem of gathering a useful heuristic of an engineer's performance. Given a variety of every day engineering tasks, how can you know exactly the difficultly of a person's work short of having done it yourself? I believe that experience is the answer in some cases, but others it is not. As another poster stated, it could also be done by working with the engineer through it all.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    That's basically my take. A lot of evaluation is properly subjective and qualitative. Both bosses staring at deadlines and union negotiators clamoring for paper trails and predefined metrics are going to be bad for the industry and therefore workers, at least in the long run.
jayd16 9y ago
>How do you prove [...] Email archives of PIP goals and the like. But that doesn't even matter. All you really have to do is prove you didn't fire them because they asked for OT pay they were owed.
wonton2 9y ago
You could use the exactly these arguments for union and against. But in modern justice systems you are innocent until proven guilty, simply so anyone cannot just scream witch and have someone burned.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  Getting laid off isn't getting buried, though. Getting a crappy raise isn't going to jail. I do think employees need organization and culture to negotiate better in the short term and manage health and career in the long term. But I don't see evidence that either the employer or the union leadership have the right incentives to meet those needs.
  - wonton2 9y ago
    I agree, but the consequence of getting fired for a employee is worse than the consequence for a employer not being able to fire someone. Also a company is more often a organization of several people which can be used to leverage a firing (or what you call it). A union only seeks to counter this by giving each employee a more level playingfield. Without unions and worker laws it is basically a third world country where anyone is at risk of being fired for reasons they dont understand or was never informed of and never given a chance to improve. The importance is in the power balance. It could even be argued that unions are just as important for distributing power and wealth in a society as a democracy. The scandinavian model is by some attributed to the power of the worker unions. Of course anyone working in management and business osners will always oppose unions. But it makes no sense that workers themselves opposes it. Skilled workers will still get work and get better compensated for it.
walshemj 9y ago
Properly done 121's and APR's

giantsloth 9y ago

General consensus amongst the developers that work directly with the person being investigated. It's pretty easy. Head butting with poor managers and broken company structures with ZERO recourse is the problem. The strawman you're putting up is not.

ginko 9y ago

Which side are you on?

bgirard 9y ago
Discussing both sides of an idea is acceptable. Picking a side is not a requirement.
cmalloc 9y ago
I don't think the grandparent's point is an issue of sides. It's more of a problem of gathering a useful heuristic of an engineer's performance. Given a variety of every day engineering tasks, how can you know exactly the difficultly of a person's work short of having done it yourself? I believe that experience is the answer in some cases, but others it is not. As another poster stated, it could also be done by working with the engineer through it all.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  That's basically my take. A lot of evaluation is properly subjective and qualitative. Both bosses staring at deadlines and union negotiators clamoring for paper trails and predefined metrics are going to be bad for the industry and therefore workers, at least in the long run.

jayd16 9y ago

>How do you prove [...] Email archives of PIP goals and the like. But that doesn't even matter. All you really have to do is prove you didn't fire them because they asked for OT pay they were owed.

wonton2 9y ago

You could use the exactly these arguments for union and against. But in modern justice systems you are innocent until proven guilty, simply so anyone cannot just scream witch and have someone burned.

humanrebar 9y ago
Getting laid off isn't getting buried, though. Getting a crappy raise isn't going to jail. I do think employees need organization and culture to negotiate better in the short term and manage health and career in the long term. But I don't see evidence that either the employer or the union leadership have the right incentives to meet those needs.
- wonton2 9y ago
  I agree, but the consequence of getting fired for a employee is worse than the consequence for a employer not being able to fire someone. Also a company is more often a organization of several people which can be used to leverage a firing (or what you call it). A union only seeks to counter this by giving each employee a more level playingfield. Without unions and worker laws it is basically a third world country where anyone is at risk of being fired for reasons they dont understand or was never informed of and never given a chance to improve. The importance is in the power balance. It could even be argued that unions are just as important for distributing power and wealth in a society as a democracy. The scandinavian model is by some attributed to the power of the worker unions. Of course anyone working in management and business osners will always oppose unions. But it makes no sense that workers themselves opposes it. Skilled workers will still get work and get better compensated for it.

walshemj 9y ago

Properly done 121's and APR's