8 ms·

Dumb Rules That Make Your Best People Want to Quit (2017)

56 points by matfil 8y ago

jgh 8y ago
Personally I hate performance reviews, but if a formal system doesn't exist people will demand something. In the absence of a system there can be appearances of favoritism and, if the managers aren't disciplined, things like raises and promotions can end up being ad-hoc and random. That said a performance review system doesn't necessarily completely cure favoritism but it at least leaves a paper trail. It should also force management into thinking about how to structure raises and promotions in a way that they're more evenly and rationally applied.
csunbird 8y ago
"Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go." This sentence is contradicts : "Let’s be honest: Performance reviews are a waste of time." How are you going to know if the person is productive if you are not doing performance reviews?
- sureaboutthis 8y ago
  People know when you're not productive. Co-workers in particular but managers, too. When this is detected, I would rather tell a non-productive person this right away and not wait for any review. Perhaps then, after a few of these, an adjustment in salary or employment can be made.
  - ryanbrunner 8y ago
    I think the key point is that you're having conversations and attempting to get the root of a lack of productivity, rather than just assuming that the employee is a bozo and firing them.
- onion2k 8y ago
  How are you going to know if the person is productive if you are not doing performance reviews? You have to take an active role in managing them rather than just passively checking in occasionally.
  - joshuamorton 8y ago
    The two aren't really mutually exclusive. I (generally speaking) know what my performance ratings will be weeks before I'm given them, but that doesn't mean that the performance review process isn't valuable (depending on how its implemented, obviously).
Mtntk 8y ago
I would add dress code to this list. "We have smart casual dress code in this software department. So you can't wear shorts event if its 40 degrees celsius. Oh and shirt is mandatory"
- EliRivers 8y ago
  We had a chap who wore leather, except sometimes a T-Shirt expressing quite harshly an opinion about a globally recognised major religious figure from antiquity. I was glad to see a dress code come in.
  - sureaboutthis 8y ago
    When I worked in the medical field, doctors would occasionally visit unannounced. We were required to wear a shirt and tie, with an available jacket, at all times.
    - arethuza 8y ago
      I remember my brother in law, who worked in very senior position in a large UK financial institution that "holidays are when you can go into the office and take your suit jacket off". I don't even own a suit :-) Edit: A few years back I turned down a second interview at the same organisation after they insisted I turn up "in standard business attire" - i.e. a suit.
      - EliRivers 8y ago
        "holidays are when you can go into the office and take your suit jacket off" Last time I went on holiday, I took a tailored suit and dressed smarter than I do at work. Three-piece suit (typically I wore just the waistcoat; done right, that looks smarter than the jacket), tailored shirt to go with it. When it's your own choice to look sharp, it's a whole different game.
  - sornaensis 8y ago
    Crass T-shirts are certainly one thing, but what is wrong with leather..?
ryanbrunner 8y ago
A lot of articles recommend against formal performance reviews, and in some sense I agree, but it is important to be thoughtful about how you're going to give feedback and work with your employees to help them perform more effectively. Oftentimes formal performance reviews are replaced with some sort of continual feedback system (whether through an actual formal system or just an informal process), but in my experience a lot of continual feedback systems just turn into a back-patting machine and lose a lot of the constructive criticism that a formal review process can bring out. Stack-ranking is obviously dumb, and yes, assigning things to a 5 point scale probably is too. But those were never the actually valuable parts of good reviews. You should always find a way to spend time and be thoughtful about where team members are excelling and where they're falling short. I've worked a few jobs that decided that performance reviews were a pointless exercise and I honestly couldn't have told you what everyone thought of my performance prior to me leaving.
- rhodysurf 8y ago
  I agree. I have a very good relationship with my boss, we speak about performance and stuff casually all the time. But we also have a formal review once a year, and it’s really helpful for me. I learn some weaknesses that I have that I might not always have time to talk about in every meet ups. It’s hard to explain but the context change definitely helps to see exactly where you stand as an employee.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  For most people I think this makes sense. Personally, blunt candor can work as well. I do not let anything slip, if I think someone needs some direction or coaching it basically happens in realtime. There's really no need for a formal review if feedback is constant. Sometimes the feedback can be more general, I feel someone needs some hints I just give it to them. I don't make it personal and don't expect people to take it personally, it's jarring at first but quickly it just feels really quite normal. Technically, there are still room for performance reviews ... but if as a manager you're telling someone in a review something they're hearing for the first time then you've failed. They should know right away.
  - 8y ago
mberning 8y ago
Let people work from home at their own whim. Never inquire about their performance. Never document anything related to their performance. Shutter your company in 5 years when you have a bloated payroll, terrible products, and nothing ever gets done on time. I get that actually managing people and their performance is harshly frowned upon on HN, but it is a very necessary evil. Working in a place where the inmates run the asylum is is not fun either from my experience.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  Employees aren't inmates. A place where the employees run the company is a strong organization.
  - GFischer 8y ago
    There have been lots of discussions here on HN, personally I think that an employee-run company still needs leadership. And companies can be good for employees without needing to be employee-run. See for example Valve, there's been a lot written about it, not all of it good: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/30/no-bosses-managers-flat-hierachy-workplace-tech-hollywood https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/30/no-bos... https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless-industry-politics/ https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless... Politics will ALWAYS exist at a workplace.
dagw 8y ago
Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go This is incredibly wasteful and an easy to way to lose good people. Take a few minutes to conduct a 'performance review' and see why they aren't producing. Sometimes it's an easy fix. I've seen companies fire people who where world class at Y simply because they weren't performing at X, despite the fact that the company also had a different department that did Y.
- krainboltgreene 8y ago
  > Take a few minutes to conduct a 'performance review' I have never seen a company implement a performance review: - That mattered - That would have detected anything - That would be more than the obvious
  - dagw 8y ago
    I feel that most performance reviews I've had have been at least pretty decent. Basically just going through what I've done the past 6 month, talking about what I'd like to be working on over the next 6 month and if there's anything that I should work on or might need to help me manage to do those things better. Often there is some sort of checklist that has be worked through, but I always get a few minutes to just talk in general about my work.
    - apahwa 8y ago
      that sounds like feedback you should be getting in manager 1:1s, the formal review process isn't necessary
- Delmania 8y ago
  It's not even a performance review; it's just root cause analysis. Something like, "Why isn't Sally meeting her deliverables?" "Because she spends her time doing PM work." "Ok, let's see if she want to transfer roles."
- wolco 8y ago
  And they were hired for y in the first place.
sureaboutthis 8y ago
> Faced with a rule-driven culture, the best employees ... are usually the first to go, because they’re in high demand and have more opportunity than most. What’s left is a pool of people who are mediocre at what they do ... And that is when I stop reading any article. EDIT: She's stating rules in the workplace make good employees leave and only mediocre employees remain. The term BS automatically applies here.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Why?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Tor3 8y ago
    Indeed, why? I've seen exactly that. Stupid rules coming up, extremely performing employees leaving or making it clear that unless that's revoked they'll leave.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      My favourite example of this was when one company tried to issue all the devs with new contracts with the "standard" IP clauses claiming ownership of everything we did. Since there were a number of Free Software devs on the team, this was unacceptable ... so, while asking for clarification and a change, we simply didn't sign the new contracts. There was no way the company could have taken action against us without completely wrecking their ability to ship, so it stalemated until they backed down.
      - philpem 8y ago
        These are usually the first clauses I query ;) This works pretty well as a response: "Okay so I maintain some open-source stuff, it's all on Github. I appreciate you want to maintain your IP, and I agree to give you first-refusal on anything new before I make it public, and stay out of any market where the company has an interest." This is usually enough to swing things from "we own everything" to "we own everything you make on work time, unless it intersects with one of our products".
ryanbrunner 8y ago
Adding another one: the advice on "Feedback methods" (don't send out engagement surveys, just walk around and ask people how they're doing) is incredibly hard to get right. It takes a remarkable amount of trust for a random individual employee to feel confident that they can voice their concerns to management. And that trust takes an enormous amount of effort. If you're a manager and you're not absolutely sure that your employees would feel free to speak their minds, giving them a risk-free way of doing so isn't a bad idea. Employees feeling they can't speak honestly to someone who is in control of their livelihood isn't a "problem with communication", it's the status quo at the majority of companies.
pjc50 8y ago
> (Don't do) Performance reviews > Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go. If you are firing someone for performance, you have done a performance review. It's just that it might be entirely in your head or based on office gossip about who appears most productive. You wouldn't optimise a program without a profiler, so you shouldn't make hire/fire decisions on productivity without some means of measuring productivity. I know it's hard and tends to result in stupid metrics, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted.
- dalbasal 8y ago
  Idk about the US, but I imagine it's more similar to the EU than the press suggests.... Anyway in most of the EU, by law and by convention^ people don't get fired often. When they do, it's a part of a greater process where a department is reorganized, jobs have been made redundant or somesuch. Firing individuals for below average performance is rare. It needs to be an extreme. If it is dines, it's done as part of a performance review) evaluation process with feedback, time... The reality is that ^The convention part is important. Regardless of laws, it's very hard to operate a business that's firing a lot. Firing someone is like exiling/outlawing them, to borrow analogies from older societies. If you try, you'll encounter a huge pile of difficulties. Moral/culture will be one. Politics will be another.
  - realandreskytt 8y ago
    I’ve fired and been fired for sub-par performance. I’m from the EU. Its not that rare at all.
    - philpem 8y ago
      The difference is, it's rarely an on-the-spot firing (at least in the UK). There are usually a few levels of "performance improvement" / "how can we help you get back on track?" before you get anywhere near "you're goneski". Assuming we're just talking about "not quite the best" work performance here.
      - 8y ago
geomark 8y ago
Indeed some of these rules and policies are ridiculous. I particularly enjoyed my time as a mid-level manager at a large aerospace company where we did stack ranking each year. We had to stack rank an organization that consisted of five departments with over 300 engineers. I was one of the department managers. Each department manager's goal was to get as many of his members ranked as highly as possible. The game theory was thick in those meetings. Unfortunately, one of the other managers had weak game and ended up with poor rankings every year. It seemed very unfair to his better people. However, this statement in the article is pretty dumb: "If you don’t trust the people you hired, why did you hire them?" How about because they interviewed well and you thought you could trust them but once they started working they proved themselves untrustworthy. That's not rocket science; it's something that happens and is not particularly rare.
- dagw 8y ago
  "If you don’t trust the people you hired, why did you hire them?" How about because they interviewed well and you thought you could trust them Or just as likely, "you" didn't hire them. Someone else in the company did based on criteria that are different than yours.
  - geomark 8y ago
    Very good point. Encountered that situation a few times.
k__ 8y ago
"If you have mediocre people doing mediocre work, you are going to have a mediocre company." Aren't most people mediocre per definition? I really hate all this talk about "We want the best of the best!" Sure you want them, but there aren't enough for all and chances are, if you aren't a really big company, you won't get the few that exist. You need to shape you company so that you can deliver value to your customers without the need of a few geniuses. Your company should be more than the sum of its (mediocre) employees.
- Jedi72 8y ago
  Even more common is "we want the best of the best, but want to pay median wages."
  - k__ 8y ago
    That's a whole other story. Even IF they all had the money, it won't work.
songzme 8y ago
Rally anyone? I have a hard time getting used to it, and I've seen stories being worked on for the sake of being in rally even though there isn't enough information for good work to be done. I've seen engineers do good work to build features that the product needed but engineer was discouraged from doing it because it wasn't in rally first. And pointing sucks, we're trying to fill stories in just to meet certain point quota per Sprint.
nwmcsween 8y ago
The issue I have with cellphones is I've routinely seen people browsing Facebook or chatting to their friends. This lasts for _hours_, as in 1pm-6pm with overtime all while others working extremely hard.

56 points by matfil 8y ago

jgh 8y ago

Personally I hate performance reviews, but if a formal system doesn't exist people will demand something. In the absence of a system there can be appearances of favoritism and, if the managers aren't disciplined, things like raises and promotions can end up being ad-hoc and random. That said a performance review system doesn't necessarily completely cure favoritism but it at least leaves a paper trail. It should also force management into thinking about how to structure raises and promotions in a way that they're more evenly and rationally applied.

csunbird 8y ago

"Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go." This sentence is contradicts : "Let’s be honest: Performance reviews are a waste of time." How are you going to know if the person is productive if you are not doing performance reviews?

sureaboutthis 8y ago
People know when you're not productive. Co-workers in particular but managers, too. When this is detected, I would rather tell a non-productive person this right away and not wait for any review. Perhaps then, after a few of these, an adjustment in salary or employment can be made.
- ryanbrunner 8y ago
  I think the key point is that you're having conversations and attempting to get the root of a lack of productivity, rather than just assuming that the employee is a bozo and firing them.
onion2k 8y ago
How are you going to know if the person is productive if you are not doing performance reviews? You have to take an active role in managing them rather than just passively checking in occasionally.
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  The two aren't really mutually exclusive. I (generally speaking) know what my performance ratings will be weeks before I'm given them, but that doesn't mean that the performance review process isn't valuable (depending on how its implemented, obviously).

Mtntk 8y ago

I would add dress code to this list. "We have smart casual dress code in this software department. So you can't wear shorts event if its 40 degrees celsius. Oh and shirt is mandatory"

EliRivers 8y ago
We had a chap who wore leather, except sometimes a T-Shirt expressing quite harshly an opinion about a globally recognised major religious figure from antiquity. I was glad to see a dress code come in.
- sureaboutthis 8y ago
  When I worked in the medical field, doctors would occasionally visit unannounced. We were required to wear a shirt and tie, with an available jacket, at all times.
  - arethuza 8y ago
    I remember my brother in law, who worked in very senior position in a large UK financial institution that "holidays are when you can go into the office and take your suit jacket off". I don't even own a suit :-) Edit: A few years back I turned down a second interview at the same organisation after they insisted I turn up "in standard business attire" - i.e. a suit.
    - EliRivers 8y ago
      "holidays are when you can go into the office and take your suit jacket off" Last time I went on holiday, I took a tailored suit and dressed smarter than I do at work. Three-piece suit (typically I wore just the waistcoat; done right, that looks smarter than the jacket), tailored shirt to go with it. When it's your own choice to look sharp, it's a whole different game.
- sornaensis 8y ago
  Crass T-shirts are certainly one thing, but what is wrong with leather..?

ryanbrunner 8y ago

A lot of articles recommend against formal performance reviews, and in some sense I agree, but it is important to be thoughtful about how you're going to give feedback and work with your employees to help them perform more effectively. Oftentimes formal performance reviews are replaced with some sort of continual feedback system (whether through an actual formal system or just an informal process), but in my experience a lot of continual feedback systems just turn into a back-patting machine and lose a lot of the constructive criticism that a formal review process can bring out. Stack-ranking is obviously dumb, and yes, assigning things to a 5 point scale probably is too. But those were never the actually valuable parts of good reviews. You should always find a way to spend time and be thoughtful about where team members are excelling and where they're falling short. I've worked a few jobs that decided that performance reviews were a pointless exercise and I honestly couldn't have told you what everyone thought of my performance prior to me leaving.

rhodysurf 8y ago
I agree. I have a very good relationship with my boss, we speak about performance and stuff casually all the time. But we also have a formal review once a year, and it’s really helpful for me. I learn some weaknesses that I have that I might not always have time to talk about in every meet ups. It’s hard to explain but the context change definitely helps to see exactly where you stand as an employee.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
For most people I think this makes sense. Personally, blunt candor can work as well. I do not let anything slip, if I think someone needs some direction or coaching it basically happens in realtime. There's really no need for a formal review if feedback is constant. Sometimes the feedback can be more general, I feel someone needs some hints I just give it to them. I don't make it personal and don't expect people to take it personally, it's jarring at first but quickly it just feels really quite normal. Technically, there are still room for performance reviews ... but if as a manager you're telling someone in a review something they're hearing for the first time then you've failed. They should know right away.
- 8y ago

mberning 8y ago

Let people work from home at their own whim. Never inquire about their performance. Never document anything related to their performance. Shutter your company in 5 years when you have a bloated payroll, terrible products, and nothing ever gets done on time. I get that actually managing people and their performance is harshly frowned upon on HN, but it is a very necessary evil. Working in a place where the inmates run the asylum is is not fun either from my experience.

fjsolwmv 8y ago
Employees aren't inmates. A place where the employees run the company is a strong organization.
- GFischer 8y ago
  There have been lots of discussions here on HN, personally I think that an employee-run company still needs leadership. And companies can be good for employees without needing to be employee-run. See for example Valve, there's been a lot written about it, not all of it good: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/30/no-bosses-managers-flat-hierachy-workplace-tech-hollywood https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/30/no-bos... https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless-industry-politics/ https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless... Politics will ALWAYS exist at a workplace.

dagw 8y ago

Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go This is incredibly wasteful and an easy to way to lose good people. Take a few minutes to conduct a 'performance review' and see why they aren't producing. Sometimes it's an easy fix. I've seen companies fire people who where world class at Y simply because they weren't performing at X, despite the fact that the company also had a different department that did Y.

krainboltgreene 8y ago
> Take a few minutes to conduct a 'performance review' I have never seen a company implement a performance review: - That mattered - That would have detected anything - That would be more than the obvious
- dagw 8y ago
  I feel that most performance reviews I've had have been at least pretty decent. Basically just going through what I've done the past 6 month, talking about what I'd like to be working on over the next 6 month and if there's anything that I should work on or might need to help me manage to do those things better. Often there is some sort of checklist that has be worked through, but I always get a few minutes to just talk in general about my work.
  - apahwa 8y ago
    that sounds like feedback you should be getting in manager 1:1s, the formal review process isn't necessary
Delmania 8y ago
It's not even a performance review; it's just root cause analysis. Something like, "Why isn't Sally meeting her deliverables?" "Because she spends her time doing PM work." "Ok, let's see if she want to transfer roles."
wolco 8y ago
And they were hired for y in the first place.

sureaboutthis 8y ago

> Faced with a rule-driven culture, the best employees ... are usually the first to go, because they’re in high demand and have more opportunity than most. What’s left is a pool of people who are mediocre at what they do ... And that is when I stop reading any article. EDIT: She's stating rules in the workplace make good employees leave and only mediocre employees remain. The term BS automatically applies here.

pjc50 8y ago
Why?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Tor3 8y ago
  Indeed, why? I've seen exactly that. Stupid rules coming up, extremely performing employees leaving or making it clear that unless that's revoked they'll leave.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    My favourite example of this was when one company tried to issue all the devs with new contracts with the "standard" IP clauses claiming ownership of everything we did. Since there were a number of Free Software devs on the team, this was unacceptable ... so, while asking for clarification and a change, we simply didn't sign the new contracts. There was no way the company could have taken action against us without completely wrecking their ability to ship, so it stalemated until they backed down.
    - philpem 8y ago
      These are usually the first clauses I query ;) This works pretty well as a response: "Okay so I maintain some open-source stuff, it's all on Github. I appreciate you want to maintain your IP, and I agree to give you first-refusal on anything new before I make it public, and stay out of any market where the company has an interest." This is usually enough to swing things from "we own everything" to "we own everything you make on work time, unless it intersects with one of our products".

ryanbrunner 8y ago

Adding another one: the advice on "Feedback methods" (don't send out engagement surveys, just walk around and ask people how they're doing) is incredibly hard to get right. It takes a remarkable amount of trust for a random individual employee to feel confident that they can voice their concerns to management. And that trust takes an enormous amount of effort. If you're a manager and you're not absolutely sure that your employees would feel free to speak their minds, giving them a risk-free way of doing so isn't a bad idea. Employees feeling they can't speak honestly to someone who is in control of their livelihood isn't a "problem with communication", it's the status quo at the majority of companies.

pjc50 8y ago

> (Don't do) Performance reviews > Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go. If you are firing someone for performance, you have done a performance review. It's just that it might be entirely in your head or based on office gossip about who appears most productive. You wouldn't optimise a program without a profiler, so you shouldn't make hire/fire decisions on productivity without some means of measuring productivity. I know it's hard and tends to result in stupid metrics, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted.

dalbasal 8y ago
Idk about the US, but I imagine it's more similar to the EU than the press suggests.... Anyway in most of the EU, by law and by convention^ people don't get fired often. When they do, it's a part of a greater process where a department is reorganized, jobs have been made redundant or somesuch. Firing individuals for below average performance is rare. It needs to be an extreme. If it is dines, it's done as part of a performance review) evaluation process with feedback, time... The reality is that ^The convention part is important. Regardless of laws, it's very hard to operate a business that's firing a lot. Firing someone is like exiling/outlawing them, to borrow analogies from older societies. If you try, you'll encounter a huge pile of difficulties. Moral/culture will be one. Politics will be another.
- realandreskytt 8y ago
  I’ve fired and been fired for sub-par performance. I’m from the EU. Its not that rare at all.
  - philpem 8y ago
    The difference is, it's rarely an on-the-spot firing (at least in the UK). There are usually a few levels of "performance improvement" / "how can we help you get back on track?" before you get anywhere near "you're goneski". Assuming we're just talking about "not quite the best" work performance here.
    - 8y ago

geomark 8y ago

Indeed some of these rules and policies are ridiculous. I particularly enjoyed my time as a mid-level manager at a large aerospace company where we did stack ranking each year. We had to stack rank an organization that consisted of five departments with over 300 engineers. I was one of the department managers. Each department manager's goal was to get as many of his members ranked as highly as possible. The game theory was thick in those meetings. Unfortunately, one of the other managers had weak game and ended up with poor rankings every year. It seemed very unfair to his better people. However, this statement in the article is pretty dumb: "If you don’t trust the people you hired, why did you hire them?" How about because they interviewed well and you thought you could trust them but once they started working they proved themselves untrustworthy. That's not rocket science; it's something that happens and is not particularly rare.

dagw 8y ago
"If you don’t trust the people you hired, why did you hire them?" How about because they interviewed well and you thought you could trust them Or just as likely, "you" didn't hire them. Someone else in the company did based on criteria that are different than yours.
- geomark 8y ago
  Very good point. Encountered that situation a few times.

k__ 8y ago

"If you have mediocre people doing mediocre work, you are going to have a mediocre company." Aren't most people mediocre per definition? I really hate all this talk about "We want the best of the best!" Sure you want them, but there aren't enough for all and chances are, if you aren't a really big company, you won't get the few that exist. You need to shape you company so that you can deliver value to your customers without the need of a few geniuses. Your company should be more than the sum of its (mediocre) employees.

Jedi72 8y ago
Even more common is "we want the best of the best, but want to pay median wages."
- k__ 8y ago
  That's a whole other story. Even IF they all had the money, it won't work.

songzme 8y ago

Rally anyone? I have a hard time getting used to it, and I've seen stories being worked on for the sake of being in rally even though there isn't enough information for good work to be done. I've seen engineers do good work to build features that the product needed but engineer was discouraged from doing it because it wasn't in rally first. And pointing sucks, we're trying to fill stories in just to meet certain point quota per Sprint.

nwmcsween 8y ago

The issue I have with cellphones is I've routinely seen people browsing Facebook or chatting to their friends. This lasts for _hours_, as in 1pm-6pm with overtime all while others working extremely hard.