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Assuming this is a serious question: You/Your group needs some serious help. What you do about it depends on your role/level of influence in your organization.

Assuming this is a serious question: You/Your group needs some serious help. What you do about it depends on your role/level of influence in your organization. Regardless of your level, I highly recommend reading Speed of Trust (like I recommended above). However, two example roles: If you are the CEO/key leader, there is no excuse for creating/fostering this mess. You have to address the culture you have fostered heads on. Your complaint: “But it will cost too much!”. If that is your mentality, you are missing the point. Don’t look at absolute costs, look at value, that is what good CEOs do. If you can realize $2 for $1 cost, or $5 for $2 of cost, which should you choose? The $2 for $1 is what you realize by creating/fostering a low trust environment. When you hire folks, find the best people you can, and then enable them. If you aren’t getting good people, it is either because a) they think your environment is toxic or b) you aren’t offering “enough” to compensate them. Note: compensation is NOT just dollars. It could be flexibility, it could be the ability to work on their side projects, it can be ability to learn new skills, or can be shared vision. Take your pick. In general, after some number of x $$$, money becomes secondary. Foster a culture of trust, mutual respect, and you will get dividends. If you are at the “lower” on the totem pole, the answer is more simple. Ask yourself: can this org be saved? If you brought this up to leadership, would they work to change the culture? If not, then it is time to pack your bags/look for a better org. If they will listen, You have to decide if you WANT to save the org. If so, you have a long road ahead, but if you can pull it off, you will gain lots of experience and will rapidly increase your marketability. Edit: In case it wasn’t made clear, let me make this final point for the ceo/leader: Spend the money/create the perks that allow you to attract the people you can trust, then once you get them, TRUST them. Yes, verify, but if you don’t do this, you are doomed to fail. Also, either find a way to trust the people you have, or get rid of them. It is a disservice to both you and them to keep around people you can’t trust. One big caveat: make sure you are someone THEY can trust too. Additional edit for spelling/grammar

rficcaglia 7y ago
Yes very serious question, and very real (multiple orgs). And most times the team manager has zero control over hiring or firing. Nor any access to C level decision makers, who are buffered by layers of HR. The orgs I have seen this in are 100% safe - highly profitable, and often funded by government or at least heavily subsidized. So, if I understand your assessment...managers who see this reality should simply leave, instead of using skill and tools to deliver value in a difficult setting? That seems overly pessimistic to me.
- cloogshicer 7y ago
  Not OP, but I agree with both your assessments of the situation. I agree with you that most companies work this way. I'd even go a step further and would say that most companies are highly dysfunctional. But I also agree with OP that the only thing you can do in situations like this is to leave. Unfortunately changing the company from the inside is extremely difficult and in most cases a futile effort. What follows for me is that one should be very careful in how they choose their employer. Unfortunately, I've found it often quite hard to judge this before starting to work there. Would love if someone could give their insight in how to figure this ought before even applying.
- sgt101 7y ago
  I think this is a great call out. This is infact the very moment that skill and professionalism in team management is called to the front. A really good manager can do something about this; but it's a gradual process and a hard one. Fundamentally you need to change the culture of the team. The first step is to establish a team - in the situation you are describing there is no real team - just a bunch of people waiting for a cheque every month, a new job or being told that this job no longer exists. You need to figure out if there is a core purpose that some or ideally most of the people in the team will sign up to (with you - if you aren't "in" then they can't be), which will deliver for your stakeholders. Then you have to orientate the team to deliver this, some of them won't come along, some of them can't. You will have to do a lot of coaching with some of the ones that would like to. The big question : what is the core purpose that your team will adopt and which will change how they work and what they will do? Ask. Ask them.
  - ellius 7y ago
    In my book if you don't have authority, including to hire and fire and affect compensation decisions, then you aren't a manager. In that situation you're half glorified babysitter and half scapegoat. And I agree this is how most organizations are designed, and why they're so anemic. I very much like flat hierarchies and consensus decision-making, but at the end of the day someone is in charge or they aren't. If they aren't, their capacity to effect cultural change is severely diminished.
rjzzleep 7y ago
TL;DR if a person doesn't have the technical background to judge someones skills, which in a lot of cases they don't otherwise they wouldn't be hiring you, it's very hard for a person to know whether someone is good at what he does or just full of shit. What you're saying is a lot of ideologically great stuff but that's a bit disconnected from how the real world of high growth tech works. The reality is that people can talk about vision and passion all they want but the US is a place where everything is a sales transaction. In a place where everything is a business transaction whoever can sell their work best wins and whoever can make an impression on perceived impact always wins over the people that think their impact will eventually be recognized. In fact listening to advice like that is what gave me a quick severance package despite being one of the most impactful engineers in the company at the time. In one place I improved their entire performance by 38% and saved them a couple millions on licensing fees. The 38% was claimed by my manager the very same day i got my severance package even though I had to make a gif to convince them of the impact and defied them by fixing this issue, which was deemed a failed project at the time. Most managers in the SV late startups are early employees that kept getting promoted and at some point were sent to Berkeley for a weekend management certificate. Very few of them stop and think about the things that they do, how they would want to be treated themselves and what they can do to improve transparency of performance. I was recently responsible for the hire of someone I initially intended as my replacement as an CTO for hire/architect. I got blinded by the resume and the vetting procedure/recruiter and his ability to smooth talk about things he knows nothing about. It didn't take me long to realize he was useless, but the problem was that the guy spending the money actually believed it for 6 months and poured money into it. He massively regretted it. I basically had to let him ruin a bunch of stuff, waiting in the background to clean up after him. Bottom line is he was a better politician that he was an engineer. And for most people it doesn't matter.
yepthatsit 7y ago
> Spend the money/create the perks... Oh right, spend the infinite piles of money we just have lying around. If we had that money, we would have already spent it to hire better people in the first place and wouldn't be in this position.
- aerophilic 7y ago
  I was actually hoping for this response. This is something that I fundamentally feel like many startups/companies miss: You should not be pursing any activity that is not inherently profitable given your cost structure. Let me say this a different way, if you can expect $10 of revenue, the absolute most you can spend is $10-your minimum profit margin (for normal businesses... for VC backed, it is more about “value/market share creation for eventual earnings). If you can not do the above, while ensuring the value, you are in the wrong business. Business 101 dictates you spend less than you earn. The question is can you really do it given your cost structure. I would go even further that if you cant afford to pay what the market dictates to achieve a specific business outcome, you should not be pursuing that business outcome in the first place.
- wool_gather 7y ago
  Parent already made clear that there are other options besides raw money: > Note: compensation is NOT just dollars. One really simple option that I think a lot of programmers would love, and that doesn't cost any money directly, is just giving them on-the-clock time to do some hacking on whatever they want, instead of keeping their noses permanently affixed to the feature grindstone.
qes 7y ago
The tough ones are people who aren't clearly bad enough to just let go, but lack enough in the skill department that trust is lower than it could be and slows things down.
clairity 7y ago
i think you're getting the trust causality somewhat backwards. people don't simply fall into trustworthy or untrustworthy buckets, but rather it's mostly context dependent (with rare exception; e.g. sociopaths). a trusting environment can reveal the latent trust inherent in the team members. and trust takes time to build, so it's often not something you can just hire for (unless maybe you hire a whole team at once). teams also require a blend of skills blanketing the problem domain, diversity of thought and background, necessary resources, clear goals, and the autonomy to make decisions toward those goals.
ignoramous 7y ago
> In case it wasn’t made clear, let me make this final point for the ceo/leader: Spend the money/create the perks that allow you to attract the people you can trust, then once you get them, TRUST them. Yes, verify, but if you don’t do this, you are doomed to fail. Also, either find a way to trust the people you have, or get rid of them. It is a disservice to both you and them to keep around people you can’t trust. Life Principles by Ray Dalio has this exact same advice. https://www.principles.com/ https://www.principles.com/

rficcaglia 7y ago

Yes very serious question, and very real (multiple orgs). And most times the team manager has zero control over hiring or firing. Nor any access to C level decision makers, who are buffered by layers of HR. The orgs I have seen this in are 100% safe - highly profitable, and often funded by government or at least heavily subsidized. So, if I understand your assessment...managers who see this reality should simply leave, instead of using skill and tools to deliver value in a difficult setting? That seems overly pessimistic to me.

cloogshicer 7y ago
Not OP, but I agree with both your assessments of the situation. I agree with you that most companies work this way. I'd even go a step further and would say that most companies are highly dysfunctional. But I also agree with OP that the only thing you can do in situations like this is to leave. Unfortunately changing the company from the inside is extremely difficult and in most cases a futile effort. What follows for me is that one should be very careful in how they choose their employer. Unfortunately, I've found it often quite hard to judge this before starting to work there. Would love if someone could give their insight in how to figure this ought before even applying.
sgt101 7y ago
I think this is a great call out. This is infact the very moment that skill and professionalism in team management is called to the front. A really good manager can do something about this; but it's a gradual process and a hard one. Fundamentally you need to change the culture of the team. The first step is to establish a team - in the situation you are describing there is no real team - just a bunch of people waiting for a cheque every month, a new job or being told that this job no longer exists. You need to figure out if there is a core purpose that some or ideally most of the people in the team will sign up to (with you - if you aren't "in" then they can't be), which will deliver for your stakeholders. Then you have to orientate the team to deliver this, some of them won't come along, some of them can't. You will have to do a lot of coaching with some of the ones that would like to. The big question : what is the core purpose that your team will adopt and which will change how they work and what they will do? Ask. Ask them.
- ellius 7y ago
  In my book if you don't have authority, including to hire and fire and affect compensation decisions, then you aren't a manager. In that situation you're half glorified babysitter and half scapegoat. And I agree this is how most organizations are designed, and why they're so anemic. I very much like flat hierarchies and consensus decision-making, but at the end of the day someone is in charge or they aren't. If they aren't, their capacity to effect cultural change is severely diminished.

rjzzleep 7y ago

TL;DR if a person doesn't have the technical background to judge someones skills, which in a lot of cases they don't otherwise they wouldn't be hiring you, it's very hard for a person to know whether someone is good at what he does or just full of shit. What you're saying is a lot of ideologically great stuff but that's a bit disconnected from how the real world of high growth tech works. The reality is that people can talk about vision and passion all they want but the US is a place where everything is a sales transaction. In a place where everything is a business transaction whoever can sell their work best wins and whoever can make an impression on perceived impact always wins over the people that think their impact will eventually be recognized. In fact listening to advice like that is what gave me a quick severance package despite being one of the most impactful engineers in the company at the time. In one place I improved their entire performance by 38% and saved them a couple millions on licensing fees. The 38% was claimed by my manager the very same day i got my severance package even though I had to make a gif to convince them of the impact and defied them by fixing this issue, which was deemed a failed project at the time. Most managers in the SV late startups are early employees that kept getting promoted and at some point were sent to Berkeley for a weekend management certificate. Very few of them stop and think about the things that they do, how they would want to be treated themselves and what they can do to improve transparency of performance. I was recently responsible for the hire of someone I initially intended as my replacement as an CTO for hire/architect. I got blinded by the resume and the vetting procedure/recruiter and his ability to smooth talk about things he knows nothing about. It didn't take me long to realize he was useless, but the problem was that the guy spending the money actually believed it for 6 months and poured money into it. He massively regretted it. I basically had to let him ruin a bunch of stuff, waiting in the background to clean up after him. Bottom line is he was a better politician that he was an engineer. And for most people it doesn't matter.

yepthatsit 7y ago

> Spend the money/create the perks... Oh right, spend the infinite piles of money we just have lying around. If we had that money, we would have already spent it to hire better people in the first place and wouldn't be in this position.

aerophilic 7y ago
I was actually hoping for this response. This is something that I fundamentally feel like many startups/companies miss: You should not be pursing any activity that is not inherently profitable given your cost structure. Let me say this a different way, if you can expect $10 of revenue, the absolute most you can spend is $10-your minimum profit margin (for normal businesses... for VC backed, it is more about “value/market share creation for eventual earnings). If you can not do the above, while ensuring the value, you are in the wrong business. Business 101 dictates you spend less than you earn. The question is can you really do it given your cost structure. I would go even further that if you cant afford to pay what the market dictates to achieve a specific business outcome, you should not be pursuing that business outcome in the first place.
wool_gather 7y ago
Parent already made clear that there are other options besides raw money: > Note: compensation is NOT just dollars. One really simple option that I think a lot of programmers would love, and that doesn't cost any money directly, is just giving them on-the-clock time to do some hacking on whatever they want, instead of keeping their noses permanently affixed to the feature grindstone.

qes 7y ago

The tough ones are people who aren't clearly bad enough to just let go, but lack enough in the skill department that trust is lower than it could be and slows things down.

clairity 7y ago

i think you're getting the trust causality somewhat backwards. people don't simply fall into trustworthy or untrustworthy buckets, but rather it's mostly context dependent (with rare exception; e.g. sociopaths). a trusting environment can reveal the latent trust inherent in the team members. and trust takes time to build, so it's often not something you can just hire for (unless maybe you hire a whole team at once). teams also require a blend of skills blanketing the problem domain, diversity of thought and background, necessary resources, clear goals, and the autonomy to make decisions toward those goals.

ignoramous 7y ago

> In case it wasn’t made clear, let me make this final point for the ceo/leader: Spend the money/create the perks that allow you to attract the people you can trust, then once you get them, TRUST them. Yes, verify, but if you don’t do this, you are doomed to fail. Also, either find a way to trust the people you have, or get rid of them. It is a disservice to both you and them to keep around people you can’t trust. Life Principles by Ray Dalio has this exact same advice. https://www.principles.com/ https://www.principles.com/