5 ms·

Frankly, if your workplace doesn't already think so, it's a red flag.

by ENOTTY 7y ago

rafaelvasco 7y ago
Yes it is. Another big red flag is micro managing. Managers that want to control even the amount of coffee you drink or how many times you go to the bathroom, if you go out too much etc. Super annoying;
- michaelcampbell 7y ago
  That happens?
  - leetrout 7y ago
    I've seen it be a concern at a couple companies where the person takes 30+ minute "coffee breaks" and has to leave the office to go to Starbucks. Not surprisingly they were generally lower output team members as well. (He says, on HN, in the middle of the workday.)
  - MS90 7y ago
    Maybe at Foxconn or something
  - settsu 7y ago
    It's not unheard of for contractors in non-NA & non-EU locales.
  - castlecrasher2 7y ago
    Maybe they don't make quotas but if they comment on how many coffee breaks or bathroom trips you make, they obviously care about it.
    - bagacrap 7y ago
      Number/duration of coffee breaks is hardly "amount of coffee you drink". And I find it hard to believe any software engineer would catch grief for any amount of time spent away from the desk of their output was measurably above average. So this complaint sounds like it's actually, "I don't get anything done and don't even bother trying to appear busy and my manager tried to talk to me about it".
  - kickopotomus 7y ago
    It happened to my wife with a past manager (customer support). It was that manager's first supervisor role and they were trying to be "metric focused" which led to extreme micro management. That management style led to most of the team quitting, including my wife. We heard that the manager was demoted about a month later.
  - octokatt 7y ago
    I've seen it most in call centers, where the call balancing is so sensitive they try to stagger bathroom breaks through a forty hour call floor. Then, that policy, which is a boring dystopia in and of itself, gets applied to other individual contributors "to make things fair". I've seen this in more than one customer-service focused company (though thankfully avoided being in the category).
gambler 7y ago
Many managers believe that learning is something that you should do on your own time. Even when "learning" boils down to memorizing idiosyncrasies of some framework/protocol/micro-controller they force you to use.
- bagacrap 7y ago
  How is this possible? I'm often asked to do something I don't know how to do. Figuring it out ("learning") is part of the process of accomplishing. I don't know how you can separate learning from doing.
  - Ajedi32 7y ago
    Yeah, I don't understand that either. As a developer, learning is my job. Writing code that I already possess all the prerequisite knowledge to write requires almost no time at all, so 99% of my time is necessarily going to be spent learning how to do things I don't already know how to do. If I had to wait until I got home to learn those new skills, I'd never get any non-trivial amount of work done.

Frankly, if your workplace doesn't already think so, it's a red flag.

by ENOTTY 7y ago

Frankly, if your workplace doesn't already think so, it's a red flag.

Yes it is. Another big red flag is micro managing. Managers that want to control even the amount of coffee you drink or how many times you go to the bathroom, if you go out too much etc. Super annoying;

michaelcampbell 7y ago
That happens?
- leetrout 7y ago
  I've seen it be a concern at a couple companies where the person takes 30+ minute "coffee breaks" and has to leave the office to go to Starbucks. Not surprisingly they were generally lower output team members as well. (He says, on HN, in the middle of the workday.)
- MS90 7y ago
  Maybe at Foxconn or something
- settsu 7y ago
  It's not unheard of for contractors in non-NA & non-EU locales.
- castlecrasher2 7y ago
  Maybe they don't make quotas but if they comment on how many coffee breaks or bathroom trips you make, they obviously care about it.
  - bagacrap 7y ago
    Number/duration of coffee breaks is hardly "amount of coffee you drink". And I find it hard to believe any software engineer would catch grief for any amount of time spent away from the desk of their output was measurably above average. So this complaint sounds like it's actually, "I don't get anything done and don't even bother trying to appear busy and my manager tried to talk to me about it".
- kickopotomus 7y ago
  It happened to my wife with a past manager (customer support). It was that manager's first supervisor role and they were trying to be "metric focused" which led to extreme micro management. That management style led to most of the team quitting, including my wife. We heard that the manager was demoted about a month later.
- octokatt 7y ago
  I've seen it most in call centers, where the call balancing is so sensitive they try to stagger bathroom breaks through a forty hour call floor. Then, that policy, which is a boring dystopia in and of itself, gets applied to other individual contributors "to make things fair". I've seen this in more than one customer-service focused company (though thankfully avoided being in the category).

gambler 7y ago

Many managers believe that learning is something that you should do on your own time. Even when "learning" boils down to memorizing idiosyncrasies of some framework/protocol/micro-controller they force you to use.

bagacrap 7y ago
How is this possible? I'm often asked to do something I don't know how to do. Figuring it out ("learning") is part of the process of accomplishing. I don't know how you can separate learning from doing.
- Ajedi32 7y ago
  Yeah, I don't understand that either. As a developer, learning is my job. Writing code that I already possess all the prerequisite knowledge to write requires almost no time at all, so 99% of my time is necessarily going to be spent learning how to do things I don't already know how to do. If I had to wait until I got home to learn those new skills, I'd never get any non-trivial amount of work done.