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+1 @FalconSensei Want to get on Teams and collaborate to fix the spelling mistakes I accidentally-on-purpose left in all those Office docs? @friend1 @friend2

+1 @FalconSensei Want to get on Teams and collaborate to fix the spelling mistakes I accidentally-on-purpose left in all those Office docs? @friend1 @friend2 @friend3 Don't forget beers on Friday. Lol. This is so stupid. You'll end up with 2 types of employees; those that work and those that work to game the metrics. My mother's seen it first hand at a government job. Shared work queues and measuring productivity via naïve metrics is an ideal work environment for lazy people that do poor quality work. Why spend 30 minutes on a task when you can do a terrible job of it in 5 minutes and get the same score?

speeder 6y ago
My wife used to work at IBM. She was fired for low performance... Thing is, in her department she was the only employee that took difficult cases and found the solution, and left the easy ones to her coworkers, her boss didn't want to fire her, but had to because the metrics said she had to go because a low total amount of cases... Last she talked with her former coworkers, now they are struggling because the hard cases keep piling up endlessy and nobody knows how to do many of them, because they fired her without warning so she couldn't even teach others how to do what she did. EDIT: oh yeah, remembered that IBM wasn't subtle about how much they needed her either, since she was the only one that could do what she did, when she worked at IBM I had lovely christmas and new year parties with her laptop on the table, because IBM back then threatened to fire her on the spot if she didn't work remotely on some important clients during those times, then her actual firing came some a short time later anyway during a seasonal lull of work.
- uCantCauseUCant 6y ago
  If we compare cooperations to intelligent beings, run by software written in processes and performed by humans, could we compare such destructive metrics to dementia?
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  This is why metrics should all be taken with a grain of salt and be subject to the opinion of ones manager. Nepotism at level certainly exists, but a good manager will always come to bat for you. Even if it sticks their neck out. That is why upper level bourgeoisie management that has no f'ing clue about the bottom rungs shouldnt touch what their not ready to unravel.
- mgkimsal 6y ago
  So frustrating to read that. Could no one even look at 'type' of cases? Tickets in a ticketing system typically have some sort of severity level associated. Taking 3 'critical' issues should be treated as at least important as taking 30 'low priority' issues.
- prepend 6y ago
  My first job was in tech support and we had similar metrics although nothing as drastic. I took really hard escalations and had a low case count. My manager pointed it out and so next period I also did 100 remote password changes in addition to my hard cases and had like 3x the next closest case count. I did this to show him how stupid his metrics are but he just said “great job, this is amazing.” So I just made sure to min max stupid metrics and do what I thought was right as it was easier than trying to fix the metrics. I definitely don’t think it’s worth being fired out of principle if I know I’m measured for case count. Generally, I try to set up policies where these metrics are not allowed for performance, but are visible. And then whenever someone tries to enact them I try to say “this is a really stupid idea and here’s why” in front of as many senior, fancy pants people as possible.
FalconSensei 6y ago
I had similar experiences in the past with review comments. So, they measure how many merge requests you left a comment (for other people's MRs), how many comments total on other peoples' merge requests, how many on your own. So I have seem approved MRs with 1 comment: 'lgtm' (looks good to me) I have seen the exact same comment pasted in all instances of something, in the same MR. i.e: "don't use @autobind, remove." instead of 1 comment saying 'remove all @autobind from file' Situation above, the person replying: 'fixed' on all comments, instead of 1 reply 'removed all @autobind' Just....... why?

speeder 6y ago

My wife used to work at IBM. She was fired for low performance... Thing is, in her department she was the only employee that took difficult cases and found the solution, and left the easy ones to her coworkers, her boss didn't want to fire her, but had to because the metrics said she had to go because a low total amount of cases... Last she talked with her former coworkers, now they are struggling because the hard cases keep piling up endlessy and nobody knows how to do many of them, because they fired her without warning so she couldn't even teach others how to do what she did. EDIT: oh yeah, remembered that IBM wasn't subtle about how much they needed her either, since she was the only one that could do what she did, when she worked at IBM I had lovely christmas and new year parties with her laptop on the table, because IBM back then threatened to fire her on the spot if she didn't work remotely on some important clients during those times, then her actual firing came some a short time later anyway during a seasonal lull of work.

uCantCauseUCant 6y ago
If we compare cooperations to intelligent beings, run by software written in processes and performed by humans, could we compare such destructive metrics to dementia?
MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
This is why metrics should all be taken with a grain of salt and be subject to the opinion of ones manager. Nepotism at level certainly exists, but a good manager will always come to bat for you. Even if it sticks their neck out. That is why upper level bourgeoisie management that has no f'ing clue about the bottom rungs shouldnt touch what their not ready to unravel.
mgkimsal 6y ago
So frustrating to read that. Could no one even look at 'type' of cases? Tickets in a ticketing system typically have some sort of severity level associated. Taking 3 'critical' issues should be treated as at least important as taking 30 'low priority' issues.
prepend 6y ago
My first job was in tech support and we had similar metrics although nothing as drastic. I took really hard escalations and had a low case count. My manager pointed it out and so next period I also did 100 remote password changes in addition to my hard cases and had like 3x the next closest case count. I did this to show him how stupid his metrics are but he just said “great job, this is amazing.” So I just made sure to min max stupid metrics and do what I thought was right as it was easier than trying to fix the metrics. I definitely don’t think it’s worth being fired out of principle if I know I’m measured for case count. Generally, I try to set up policies where these metrics are not allowed for performance, but are visible. And then whenever someone tries to enact them I try to say “this is a really stupid idea and here’s why” in front of as many senior, fancy pants people as possible.

FalconSensei 6y ago

I had similar experiences in the past with review comments. So, they measure how many merge requests you left a comment (for other people's MRs), how many comments total on other peoples' merge requests, how many on your own. So I have seem approved MRs with 1 comment: 'lgtm' (looks good to me) I have seen the exact same comment pasted in all instances of something, in the same MR. i.e: "don't use @autobind, remove." instead of 1 comment saying 'remove all @autobind from file' Situation above, the person replying: 'fixed' on all comments, instead of 1 reply 'removed all @autobind' Just....... why?