5 ms·

Who are you to know who is doing good work or not? If managers are not involved, they should have no say.

by loopz 6y ago

lkrubner 6y ago
People do reliably know which of their co-workers are good and which of their co-workers suck badly. But also, the rule of 150 applies here. At a startup with less than 100 people, each worker often has an idea of everyone's strength, throughout the company. However, if you are at a big company, with thousands of employees in multiple locations, then it is often best to restrict upvoting to some subset of the company. For instance, a company with 1,000 workers might have 10 teams of 100 people each. At such a company, it might make sense to have the rule that you can only upvote people who are on your team. The assumption is that these would be the people you interact with and have a good idea about who is good and who is bad. Having said all this, I'm not suggesting that this should be the only way that managers evaluate their workers, but having a formal, structured, regular process is important. There are other techniques that a good manager should also follow. If you have time, you can listen to the interview I gave here: http://simpleleadership.io/why-group-meetings-can-be-time-wasters-with-lawrence-krubner/ http://simpleleadership.io/why-group-meetings-can-be-time-wa... Too many managers waste too much time in big meetings, more time should be spent in one to one meetings. About this: "Who are you to know who is doing good work or not?" I can't tell if you mean that as a criticism of my suggestion or whether you are attacking the original article for the idea "When your coworker does great work, tell their manager." Because, if you believe people can not evaluate their co-workers, then you must disagree with the above article.
- loopz 6y ago
  Every time this has been attempted, it devolves into toxic work culture. Also, how can you know what other people are working on? Most of the work is outside anyone's scope, and end up toxic when optimizing for arbitrary metrics. I speak for myself, mostly unrelated to articles put on www. I don't have to agree or disagree by anyone else's metrics and dominating rhetorics. Not meant to disrespect, but am not fully aboard naive beliefs. Experience and learning from others will in time tell, and moderate good intentions.
  - lkrubner 6y ago
    No, I think you are thinking of systems like the stacked rank system they used at Microsoft.
    - loopz 6y ago
      That too. Not saying your ideas have no merit, but such always need refinement. People who think they're the shit usually local-optimize, so don't regard anyone's evaluations as much since people generally don't know what work other people do, or are excluded from. This is regarded upside-down usually, since a good worker leaving should be unnoticed by the org. But some people play Hero, to detriment of every one around them, or expect others to do their work because all they see is their own little bubble. That's OK by itself, but doesn't merit enough opinion for policy and governance levers. It's kind of like gardeners optimizing for monoculture, and complaining about falling market prices and disease leading to lower; but predictable yields.
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  > "Because, if you believe people can not evaluate their co-workers, then you must disagree with the above article." The article includes that there are times when you can't evaluate your coworkers and don't realise that you can't, when it says: "giving someone the wrong “level” of compliment. For example, if they’re a very senior engineer and you say something like “PERSON did SIMPLE_ROUTINE_TASK really well!” — that doesn’t reflect well on them and feels condescending. This can happen if you don’t know the person’s position or don’t understand the expectations for their role.". You might think you know their role and expectations of it, but they might disagree - and their manager might disagree. Your position seems to be "vote on people you know, once per time period", and the article's position seems to be "feedback on anyone who does good work, any time, with their permission" Your system will lead to: 1. You know more about people you work closely with, than others. 2. From them, you will have opinions about who does good work. 3. When it comes to voting time, you are incentivised to put that aside and vote in a way that keeps you with people whose company you enjoy, not people who objectively contribute most to the company goals, as a manager would see it. Because you have a limited number of votes, and votes exist as a rating for promotions and firings. 4. Managers have no idea why some people were voted for, or whether the people voted on think it's a fair vote. The article's system will lead to: 1. You see any piece of good work which catches your eye. 2. You approach the coworker and talk to them, when you might not otherwise have done so, ask permission and explain why you think it's worth feedback, building connections between employees. 3. Managers get smaller, more frequent, feedback with explanations and know that the coworker agrees with this judgement of their work. Managers know who sent the feedback and whether they trust your judgment. 4. While the people you feedback on are affected by it, it's nowhere near as direct as 1 vote -> your only influence on the result, so you can afford to be more generous and less self-interested. Other differences between the article and your suggested approach: you are not limited to 3 votes when sending feedback, you can feedback on as many people as you like. If you send feedback as and when it happens, you're less affected by recency bias from the last few days before voting day. You aren't obligated to send any feedback, but you are obligated to vote for 3 people, even if you think you have only 1, or 5 good coworkers.
  - loopz 6y ago
    Pitching employee against employee, it's been tried since 2000 .com burst. Whatever edge that gave some owners, been hollowed out already.

Who are you to know who is doing good work or not? If managers are not involved, they should have no say.

by loopz 6y ago

Who are you to know who is doing good work or not? If managers are not involved, they should have no say.

People do reliably know which of their co-workers are good and which of their co-workers suck badly. But also, the rule of 150 applies here. At a startup with less than 100 people, each worker often has an idea of everyone's strength, throughout the company. However, if you are at a big company, with thousands of employees in multiple locations, then it is often best to restrict upvoting to some subset of the company. For instance, a company with 1,000 workers might have 10 teams of 100 people each. At such a company, it might make sense to have the rule that you can only upvote people who are on your team. The assumption is that these would be the people you interact with and have a good idea about who is good and who is bad. Having said all this, I'm not suggesting that this should be the only way that managers evaluate their workers, but having a formal, structured, regular process is important. There are other techniques that a good manager should also follow. If you have time, you can listen to the interview I gave here: http://simpleleadership.io/why-group-meetings-can-be-time-wasters-with-lawrence-krubner/ http://simpleleadership.io/why-group-meetings-can-be-time-wa... Too many managers waste too much time in big meetings, more time should be spent in one to one meetings. About this: "Who are you to know who is doing good work or not?" I can't tell if you mean that as a criticism of my suggestion or whether you are attacking the original article for the idea "When your coworker does great work, tell their manager." Because, if you believe people can not evaluate their co-workers, then you must disagree with the above article.

loopz 6y ago
Every time this has been attempted, it devolves into toxic work culture. Also, how can you know what other people are working on? Most of the work is outside anyone's scope, and end up toxic when optimizing for arbitrary metrics. I speak for myself, mostly unrelated to articles put on www. I don't have to agree or disagree by anyone else's metrics and dominating rhetorics. Not meant to disrespect, but am not fully aboard naive beliefs. Experience and learning from others will in time tell, and moderate good intentions.
- lkrubner 6y ago
  No, I think you are thinking of systems like the stacked rank system they used at Microsoft.
  - loopz 6y ago
    That too. Not saying your ideas have no merit, but such always need refinement. People who think they're the shit usually local-optimize, so don't regard anyone's evaluations as much since people generally don't know what work other people do, or are excluded from. This is regarded upside-down usually, since a good worker leaving should be unnoticed by the org. But some people play Hero, to detriment of every one around them, or expect others to do their work because all they see is their own little bubble. That's OK by itself, but doesn't merit enough opinion for policy and governance levers. It's kind of like gardeners optimizing for monoculture, and complaining about falling market prices and disease leading to lower; but predictable yields.
jodrellblank 6y ago
> "Because, if you believe people can not evaluate their co-workers, then you must disagree with the above article." The article includes that there are times when you can't evaluate your coworkers and don't realise that you can't, when it says: "giving someone the wrong “level” of compliment. For example, if they’re a very senior engineer and you say something like “PERSON did SIMPLE_ROUTINE_TASK really well!” — that doesn’t reflect well on them and feels condescending. This can happen if you don’t know the person’s position or don’t understand the expectations for their role.". You might think you know their role and expectations of it, but they might disagree - and their manager might disagree. Your position seems to be "vote on people you know, once per time period", and the article's position seems to be "feedback on anyone who does good work, any time, with their permission" Your system will lead to: 1. You know more about people you work closely with, than others. 2. From them, you will have opinions about who does good work. 3. When it comes to voting time, you are incentivised to put that aside and vote in a way that keeps you with people whose company you enjoy, not people who objectively contribute most to the company goals, as a manager would see it. Because you have a limited number of votes, and votes exist as a rating for promotions and firings. 4. Managers have no idea why some people were voted for, or whether the people voted on think it's a fair vote. The article's system will lead to: 1. You see any piece of good work which catches your eye. 2. You approach the coworker and talk to them, when you might not otherwise have done so, ask permission and explain why you think it's worth feedback, building connections between employees. 3. Managers get smaller, more frequent, feedback with explanations and know that the coworker agrees with this judgement of their work. Managers know who sent the feedback and whether they trust your judgment. 4. While the people you feedback on are affected by it, it's nowhere near as direct as 1 vote -> your only influence on the result, so you can afford to be more generous and less self-interested. Other differences between the article and your suggested approach: you are not limited to 3 votes when sending feedback, you can feedback on as many people as you like. If you send feedback as and when it happens, you're less affected by recency bias from the last few days before voting day. You aren't obligated to send any feedback, but you are obligated to vote for 3 people, even if you think you have only 1, or 5 good coworkers.
- loopz 6y ago
  Pitching employee against employee, it's been tried since 2000 .com burst. Whatever edge that gave some owners, been hollowed out already.