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This is obviously what any sensible and thoughtful manager aspires to, and yet it is still so rare. Are there tradeoffs we aren't considering? Why is this such

This is obviously what any sensible and thoughtful manager aspires to, and yet it is still so rare. Are there tradeoffs we aren't considering? Why is this such a self-evident ideal, yet rarely achieved in practice? There must be good reasons..

BurningFrog 7y ago
There are only so many good people. Someone has to hire the bad people.
- jay_kyburz 7y ago
  Nar, bad people need to change their ways until they are good people and employable. Unless they are _literately_ unemployable, in which case we should consider them disabled at look after them as if we would anybody else with metal or physical disabilities.
  - briandear 7y ago
    > Unless they are _literately_ unemployable, in which case we should consider them disabled at look after them as if we would anybody else with metal or physical disabilities. Why? People shouldn’t be rewarded for being disagreeable, unwilling to get along with people, and unwilling to work. If they are literally disabled and can’t work at all, that’s one thing. But even people with mental disabilities can be great employees. Rewarding anti-social behavior with “looking after” incentivizes such behavior. Subsidize behavior and you get more of it. Case in point, all of the fake disability people who have unverifiable soft tissue “injuries” that collect disability as a life choice.
    - bsanr2 7y ago
      You would rather have to work with people who have an incentive to behave badly (in order to get fired from jobs they didn't want in the first place), than to just give them enough to live on until they decide how they're going to contribute? Between the disabled and underemployed, there must be more than enough people to seriously jeopardize overall economic stability should destitution force them to action. And where is the role of the employer and the overall culture in fostering a work environment that isn't miserable?
      - lliamander 7y ago
        > than to just give them enough to live on until they decide how they're going to contribute? How many will decide not to contribute?
        SuoDuanDao 7y ago
        If status and social mobility are tied to contributing, I'd guess more than we'd otherwise expect.
        danharaj 7y ago
        Who cares? We can sustain all of the socially necessary industries of modern civilization with a fraction of the workforce. I don't want to work with people who are working just because they are coerced to work. They get in my way and it debases all of us.
        lliamander 7y ago
        What an Orwellian use of the word "coerced". There is presently no coercion to work: only the necessity of survival (just as it always has). On the other hand, the future you envision would require the coercion of the productive minority.
        bsanr2 7y ago
        Human society is not what it was 100, 500, 1000, 10000 years ago. Conjuring a farcical "necessity of survival" is disingenuous in a world where the average worker is hyper-specialized, such that they perform a fraction of the labor directly associated with surviving. On the other hand, since failure to participate in this model - again, wherein a given individual hardly contributes directly to his own survival, but instead supports the society which provides the rest for him, usually far below the value of his work for it - is an existential danger, I think coercion is a fine word for the situation.
        lliamander 7y ago
    - lliamander 7y ago
      Traits like agreeableness, intelligence, and conscientiousness have some genetic components, and may also influenced by early childhood experiences. A severe deficiency in one or more of these traits may be largely outside an individual's control, but nonetheless prevent the individual from integrating into society and achieving stable employment. That said, there is still an element of will there, and we should also still try align incentives to give these individuals the best chance of productive engagement with society. The disability scamming is real (though somewhat complicated by the fact that long term unemployment can result in chronic pain symptoms). I don't think just cutting people a check is necessarily a good idea. I kind of wonder if the problem of unemployable people would be reduced if we removed minimum wage laws.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  This kind of essentialized thinking is why the US is so poor at leveraging its labor force effectively, falls back on MBA sophistry, private equity grifting, and biz guru cultishness. W. Edward Deming and the Toyota model he inspired demonstrate that it’s more about empowering workers, treating them with respect and autonomy, and respecting their contributions for what they really are, as opposed to ascribing them to management. Go read about what Toyota did at the NUMMI plant if you need further evidence of this.
  - dboreham 7y ago
    Meanwhile...the floggings will continue..
  - jcims 7y ago
    lol talk to Toyota IT and contractors. It’s not all roses.
- poulsbohemian 7y ago
  This feels a bit like the 10x developer discussion. There is a small percentage of the population who are 10x developers anyplace they go. There is another chunk that are 10x developers given a solid environment, who would otherwise be average or even poor developers in the wrong environment. There are average developers, and then there are a few that just aren't very good and should be in some other profession. It seems almost obvious this holds true for any job, including Costco, where perhaps someone isn't fast or personable enough to be a checker, but they'd be great driving the forklift. Find the right environment and suddenly they shine. There will always be a percentage of the population that is unemployable for some reason, but my personal experience is that it isn't as large as is often believed.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    To take it from another PoV: most businesses aren't 10x either, and aren't in a position to leverage a 10x worker. Commodity businesses don't need good employees, they need warm bodies that can do their checklists and smile from time to time, while not stealing money or equipment.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    This is an important angle. "Good people" is, to a substantial extent, a relationship property, not an individual one. That is I am "good people" for one job, but "bad people" for many others. That said, this is not a random distribution. Some people have serious character flaws (evil, lazy, angry), or are just not very competent at anything. If all organizations only hire "good people", these will be left unemployed. And here's the thing: Those unemployed underskilled "bad people" are then an underused resource, and a reasonably functioning labor market will find way to make use of them. I think of things like fast-food restaurants as a real triumph in this area! That industry has found a way to run a well functioning business using barely competent people who often quit within months. And that's pretty much what I had in mind when I wrote my tongue in cheek comment. BTW, my apologies to current and former fast food workers. I know you're not bad people :) But when you argue about those left out "good people" policy, you kind of have to use that term...
peterwwillis 7y ago
I think the main reason is a failure to properly understand the employee. Most employer-employee relationships [in the US, anyway] are akin to serfdom, or some other weird form of drastically-out-of-whack power structure. Employees often aren't treated as equals, they're not given agency or power, their needs and desires aren't understood, and they aren't inspired by a common cause. So unless an individual takes it upon themselves to suddenly do the best job they can possibly do, they will flounder in their own little world, being largely ignored by management (until they're not meeting some ridiculous arbitrary yearly goals that are mostly designed to cull the completely apathetic) and never having any interaction with executives other than the way a king would give proclamations to the townspeople. To me, "treating people well" means treating them like people who have a say in what they do and how they do it, by helping them do the things they want to do, by connecting them to their work, giving them pride and purpose, feeling valued and compensated. After that, the rest takes care of itself. But getting to that point is impossible if management treats them like cattle.
twiceaday 7y ago
Employee perks and salaries seem much easier to cut than to increase. Given enough time, especially if a business goes through struggles, things end up down hill. But also, I think your implied premise is flawed. The goal is to run a successful company, and unfortunately happy workers don't factor much into the success, not always. Mediocre, unhappy workers are much easier to come by. If you can structure your business to run well on those that might actually be optimal for the bottom line, and that's really all that matters on the stock market.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > If you can structure your business to run well on those that might actually be optimal for the bottom line, and that's really all that matters on the stock market. That is, in my experience, how a lot of brick&mortar commodity stores - grocery stores, clothing stores, etc. - run in my home town (Kraków, Poland). The infinite source of disposable workers is the population of fresh undergrads that come to the city to study.
JustSomeNobody 7y ago
Culture. If the people up top Only care about numbers then eventually the people down below will only care about numbers. The people who don’t leave for places that are better.
bsanr2 7y ago
Many American companies that are infamous for not being able to do it here manage it in their overseas locations. I pin it on the deficiencies of American culture and some combination of the failures in worker's rights, corporate priorities, and consumer habits that it influences. We know a good thing when we see it, but with our history and our ethos, we just can't seem to help ourselves. The "what" we do wrong is myriad, but I believe this is the why.
- pkaye 7y ago
  There are differences in how other countries operate. I've worked for foreign company that had offices in the US and they had lots of cultural differences in how they operate. So many people left in frustration including I.
lkrubner 7y ago
One possible answer is that much of management is driven by irrational forces, to a much greater degree than is predicted by economic theory. Perhaps ego and selfishness are much bigger motivators than generally understood. Such is my take in "How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps": https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/0998997617/ https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09...

BurningFrog 7y ago

There are only so many good people. Someone has to hire the bad people.

jay_kyburz 7y ago
Nar, bad people need to change their ways until they are good people and employable. Unless they are _literately_ unemployable, in which case we should consider them disabled at look after them as if we would anybody else with metal or physical disabilities.
- briandear 7y ago
  > Unless they are _literately_ unemployable, in which case we should consider them disabled at look after them as if we would anybody else with metal or physical disabilities. Why? People shouldn’t be rewarded for being disagreeable, unwilling to get along with people, and unwilling to work. If they are literally disabled and can’t work at all, that’s one thing. But even people with mental disabilities can be great employees. Rewarding anti-social behavior with “looking after” incentivizes such behavior. Subsidize behavior and you get more of it. Case in point, all of the fake disability people who have unverifiable soft tissue “injuries” that collect disability as a life choice.
  - bsanr2 7y ago
    You would rather have to work with people who have an incentive to behave badly (in order to get fired from jobs they didn't want in the first place), than to just give them enough to live on until they decide how they're going to contribute? Between the disabled and underemployed, there must be more than enough people to seriously jeopardize overall economic stability should destitution force them to action. And where is the role of the employer and the overall culture in fostering a work environment that isn't miserable?
    - lliamander 7y ago
      > than to just give them enough to live on until they decide how they're going to contribute? How many will decide not to contribute?
      - SuoDuanDao 7y ago
        If status and social mobility are tied to contributing, I'd guess more than we'd otherwise expect.
      - danharaj 7y ago
        Who cares? We can sustain all of the socially necessary industries of modern civilization with a fraction of the workforce. I don't want to work with people who are working just because they are coerced to work. They get in my way and it debases all of us.
        lliamander 7y ago
        What an Orwellian use of the word "coerced". There is presently no coercion to work: only the necessity of survival (just as it always has). On the other hand, the future you envision would require the coercion of the productive minority.
        bsanr2 7y ago
        Human society is not what it was 100, 500, 1000, 10000 years ago. Conjuring a farcical "necessity of survival" is disingenuous in a world where the average worker is hyper-specialized, such that they perform a fraction of the labor directly associated with surviving. On the other hand, since failure to participate in this model - again, wherein a given individual hardly contributes directly to his own survival, but instead supports the society which provides the rest for him, usually far below the value of his work for it - is an existential danger, I think coercion is a fine word for the situation.
        lliamander 7y ago
  - lliamander 7y ago
    Traits like agreeableness, intelligence, and conscientiousness have some genetic components, and may also influenced by early childhood experiences. A severe deficiency in one or more of these traits may be largely outside an individual's control, but nonetheless prevent the individual from integrating into society and achieving stable employment. That said, there is still an element of will there, and we should also still try align incentives to give these individuals the best chance of productive engagement with society. The disability scamming is real (though somewhat complicated by the fact that long term unemployment can result in chronic pain symptoms). I don't think just cutting people a check is necessarily a good idea. I kind of wonder if the problem of unemployable people would be reduced if we removed minimum wage laws.
claudeganon 7y ago
This kind of essentialized thinking is why the US is so poor at leveraging its labor force effectively, falls back on MBA sophistry, private equity grifting, and biz guru cultishness. W. Edward Deming and the Toyota model he inspired demonstrate that it’s more about empowering workers, treating them with respect and autonomy, and respecting their contributions for what they really are, as opposed to ascribing them to management. Go read about what Toyota did at the NUMMI plant if you need further evidence of this.
- dboreham 7y ago
  Meanwhile...the floggings will continue..
- jcims 7y ago
  lol talk to Toyota IT and contractors. It’s not all roses.
poulsbohemian 7y ago
This feels a bit like the 10x developer discussion. There is a small percentage of the population who are 10x developers anyplace they go. There is another chunk that are 10x developers given a solid environment, who would otherwise be average or even poor developers in the wrong environment. There are average developers, and then there are a few that just aren't very good and should be in some other profession. It seems almost obvious this holds true for any job, including Costco, where perhaps someone isn't fast or personable enough to be a checker, but they'd be great driving the forklift. Find the right environment and suddenly they shine. There will always be a percentage of the population that is unemployable for some reason, but my personal experience is that it isn't as large as is often believed.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  To take it from another PoV: most businesses aren't 10x either, and aren't in a position to leverage a 10x worker. Commodity businesses don't need good employees, they need warm bodies that can do their checklists and smile from time to time, while not stealing money or equipment.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  This is an important angle. "Good people" is, to a substantial extent, a relationship property, not an individual one. That is I am "good people" for one job, but "bad people" for many others. That said, this is not a random distribution. Some people have serious character flaws (evil, lazy, angry), or are just not very competent at anything. If all organizations only hire "good people", these will be left unemployed. And here's the thing: Those unemployed underskilled "bad people" are then an underused resource, and a reasonably functioning labor market will find way to make use of them. I think of things like fast-food restaurants as a real triumph in this area! That industry has found a way to run a well functioning business using barely competent people who often quit within months. And that's pretty much what I had in mind when I wrote my tongue in cheek comment. BTW, my apologies to current and former fast food workers. I know you're not bad people :) But when you argue about those left out "good people" policy, you kind of have to use that term...

peterwwillis 7y ago

I think the main reason is a failure to properly understand the employee. Most employer-employee relationships [in the US, anyway] are akin to serfdom, or some other weird form of drastically-out-of-whack power structure. Employees often aren't treated as equals, they're not given agency or power, their needs and desires aren't understood, and they aren't inspired by a common cause. So unless an individual takes it upon themselves to suddenly do the best job they can possibly do, they will flounder in their own little world, being largely ignored by management (until they're not meeting some ridiculous arbitrary yearly goals that are mostly designed to cull the completely apathetic) and never having any interaction with executives other than the way a king would give proclamations to the townspeople. To me, "treating people well" means treating them like people who have a say in what they do and how they do it, by helping them do the things they want to do, by connecting them to their work, giving them pride and purpose, feeling valued and compensated. After that, the rest takes care of itself. But getting to that point is impossible if management treats them like cattle.

twiceaday 7y ago

Employee perks and salaries seem much easier to cut than to increase. Given enough time, especially if a business goes through struggles, things end up down hill. But also, I think your implied premise is flawed. The goal is to run a successful company, and unfortunately happy workers don't factor much into the success, not always. Mediocre, unhappy workers are much easier to come by. If you can structure your business to run well on those that might actually be optimal for the bottom line, and that's really all that matters on the stock market.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> If you can structure your business to run well on those that might actually be optimal for the bottom line, and that's really all that matters on the stock market. That is, in my experience, how a lot of brick&mortar commodity stores - grocery stores, clothing stores, etc. - run in my home town (Kraków, Poland). The infinite source of disposable workers is the population of fresh undergrads that come to the city to study.

JustSomeNobody 7y ago

Culture. If the people up top Only care about numbers then eventually the people down below will only care about numbers. The people who don’t leave for places that are better.

bsanr2 7y ago

Many American companies that are infamous for not being able to do it here manage it in their overseas locations. I pin it on the deficiencies of American culture and some combination of the failures in worker's rights, corporate priorities, and consumer habits that it influences. We know a good thing when we see it, but with our history and our ethos, we just can't seem to help ourselves. The "what" we do wrong is myriad, but I believe this is the why.

pkaye 7y ago
There are differences in how other countries operate. I've worked for foreign company that had offices in the US and they had lots of cultural differences in how they operate. So many people left in frustration including I.

lkrubner 7y ago

One possible answer is that much of management is driven by irrational forces, to a much greater degree than is predicted by economic theory. Perhaps ego and selfishness are much bigger motivators than generally understood. Such is my take in "How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps": https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/0998997617/ https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09...