10 ms·

> As heartless as this may seem... It's not heartless, it's just stupid. It's like screwing in a lightbulb with a hammer. > And I didn’t want to do the task s

by dvt 6y ago

> As heartless as this may seem... It's not heartless, it's just stupid. It's like screwing in a lightbulb with a hammer. > And I didn’t want to do the task so, consciously ignoring Mr. Weinberg, I transformed the ordeal into an optimization problem, for which I wrote an application to help me with. Treating people like robots is probably the worst way to solve people ops problems. It's like managers learned nothing from the failures of stack ranking, whiteboard interviews, brain teasers, and other similar "optimization" methods. These ill-judged solutions show a clear misunderstanding of the scope and context of the problem at hand. In fact, it's pretty antithetical to being a good engineer.

varajelle 6y ago
I don't think he treats people like robots. The way he "delivers the message" is humane. And the way he selects who must go is totally an optimization problem.
- Sholmesy 6y ago
  You cannot boil down humans to 5-6 attribute points. What about personalities/coordination/how people actually interact. Product A might be filled with people who are use to taking charge, and Product B might be filled with people who are more reserved about their opinions. This is a dreadful way to solve this problem. If it were that easy, his job as CTO wouldn't exist and we could simply plug it into a SaaS AI that spits out optimal hiring strategies. Nonetheless, I appreciate the insight/sharing publicly.
  - emerongi 6y ago
    And yet we hire based on people's achievements and previous success. And the world keeps on turning. It's very hard to build the perfect team from the get-go. However, you can probably build a pretty good team over time. In my opinion, it's better to make an average decision than no decision at all; you can improve from average to something better as you go along.
    - ionwake 6y ago
      Yes but what tends to happen is - the risk is - youll probably just end up with a stable team, but not a good team. The best will have left or been pushed out. The ones that stay, desperate enough to be unethical to keep their positions, to lie to cover their asses. A barely functioning but stable entity floating in space not producing anything of value until the company slowly withers and disappears.
  - vntok 6y ago
    Did you read the article? He specifically says: "Most important, the application gave me a few starting points. Of those, I still had to consider the team dynamics, existing teams, personalities, seniority, potential, personal situation, future needs, …"
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      And totally missed on the friendship angle. So, here is my prediction: the people that got fired will find new places to work at where the management is a bit more mature, and will then pull their capable buddies left behind at their old company with them. That's how it usually goes when a new junior manager goes to town with an axe.
      - barthvr 6y ago
        Isn't the friendship angle precisely addressed by "team dynamics", "personalities", and "personal situation" ?
        jacquesm 6y ago
        Friendships can transcend teams, personalities are not going to be modeled in software and 'personal situation' is a great way to accidentally make a bad situation worse, for instance: by deciding to keep someone who has a family in favor of someone who does not but who is instrumental to the company in non-obvious ways. So no, I don't see that particular part addressed well or even at all through those three sets of keywords and I've seen companies be utterly destroyed because they fired a guy they thought wasn't contributing enough who just happened to be the glue holding the whole thing together. This is not a software problem, and it can't be approached with the same toolset that you would use to figure out register optimization, it is first and foremost a people problem. The OP is seriously out of their depth and too full of themselves due to their recent promotion to realize this. That realization won't be long in the coming though, I predict that within six months there will be another blog post about how he left this toxic company behind to go somewhere else without realizing that he was part of the problem all along. For reference, I give you his blog post from six months ago: https://danlebrero.com/2020/06/10/you-dont-believe-in-clean-code/#content https://danlebrero.com/2020/06/10/you-dont-believe-in-clean-...
emerongi 6y ago
He needed to evaluate the team based on some criteria one way or another. He chose certain criteria and used the computer to assist him in the evaluation. Another option would be to choose the team on who you just "like the most". Maybe this would have been more to your liking? It's more human, I guess. However, notice that there is still a criteria and still an evaluation phase, you can't avoid it (unless you pick by random). None of this means that you have to use text-to-speech and have the computer read out the list of names who were fired. You can still go to each team member and talk about it, like a human.
- foepys 6y ago
  Liking each other is a pretty huge part of a positive team dynamic. The line to unfair favoritism is thin but a team of high-skilled engineers that don't like each other will most likely perform worse than a team that likes each other but has a bit worse average skill level. Sometimes a person that is regarded as low skill can motivate other team members to hugely increase their productivity by building a positive atmosphere.
  - mech422 6y ago
    >>Sometimes a person that is regarded as low skill can motivate other team members to hugely increase their productivity by building a positive atmosphere. Umm - Isn't that just part of the job? Most workers are expected to at least not _negatively_ impact the working environment, while being at least as competent as their co-workers. This actually sounds more like someone trying to get co-workers to cover their short-comings for them...
- jacquesm 6y ago
  He should have realized that he lacked the knowledge and experience to tell his boss to fuck off because on day #2 on the job you simply can not make this decision in a way that won't kill the company.
  - SMFloris 6y ago
    It is pretty interesting how this conversation goes. CTO: I can't do that on my 2nd day. CEO: I thought your interests align with the company. It is your job to align everyone under you to our direction. CTO: Yes, of course. Right away.
big5 6y ago
KISS. Let the coin to make decision, flip it. You are all welcome.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  That would have been just as good or better.

by dvt 6y ago

varajelle 6y ago

I don't think he treats people like robots. The way he "delivers the message" is humane. And the way he selects who must go is totally an optimization problem.

Sholmesy 6y ago
You cannot boil down humans to 5-6 attribute points. What about personalities/coordination/how people actually interact. Product A might be filled with people who are use to taking charge, and Product B might be filled with people who are more reserved about their opinions. This is a dreadful way to solve this problem. If it were that easy, his job as CTO wouldn't exist and we could simply plug it into a SaaS AI that spits out optimal hiring strategies. Nonetheless, I appreciate the insight/sharing publicly.
- emerongi 6y ago
  And yet we hire based on people's achievements and previous success. And the world keeps on turning. It's very hard to build the perfect team from the get-go. However, you can probably build a pretty good team over time. In my opinion, it's better to make an average decision than no decision at all; you can improve from average to something better as you go along.
  - ionwake 6y ago
    Yes but what tends to happen is - the risk is - youll probably just end up with a stable team, but not a good team. The best will have left or been pushed out. The ones that stay, desperate enough to be unethical to keep their positions, to lie to cover their asses. A barely functioning but stable entity floating in space not producing anything of value until the company slowly withers and disappears.
- vntok 6y ago
  Did you read the article? He specifically says: "Most important, the application gave me a few starting points. Of those, I still had to consider the team dynamics, existing teams, personalities, seniority, potential, personal situation, future needs, …"
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    And totally missed on the friendship angle. So, here is my prediction: the people that got fired will find new places to work at where the management is a bit more mature, and will then pull their capable buddies left behind at their old company with them. That's how it usually goes when a new junior manager goes to town with an axe.
    - barthvr 6y ago
      Isn't the friendship angle precisely addressed by "team dynamics", "personalities", and "personal situation" ?
      - jacquesm 6y ago
        Friendships can transcend teams, personalities are not going to be modeled in software and 'personal situation' is a great way to accidentally make a bad situation worse, for instance: by deciding to keep someone who has a family in favor of someone who does not but who is instrumental to the company in non-obvious ways. So no, I don't see that particular part addressed well or even at all through those three sets of keywords and I've seen companies be utterly destroyed because they fired a guy they thought wasn't contributing enough who just happened to be the glue holding the whole thing together. This is not a software problem, and it can't be approached with the same toolset that you would use to figure out register optimization, it is first and foremost a people problem. The OP is seriously out of their depth and too full of themselves due to their recent promotion to realize this. That realization won't be long in the coming though, I predict that within six months there will be another blog post about how he left this toxic company behind to go somewhere else without realizing that he was part of the problem all along. For reference, I give you his blog post from six months ago: https://danlebrero.com/2020/06/10/you-dont-believe-in-clean-code/#content https://danlebrero.com/2020/06/10/you-dont-believe-in-clean-...

emerongi 6y ago

He needed to evaluate the team based on some criteria one way or another. He chose certain criteria and used the computer to assist him in the evaluation. Another option would be to choose the team on who you just "like the most". Maybe this would have been more to your liking? It's more human, I guess. However, notice that there is still a criteria and still an evaluation phase, you can't avoid it (unless you pick by random). None of this means that you have to use text-to-speech and have the computer read out the list of names who were fired. You can still go to each team member and talk about it, like a human.

foepys 6y ago
Liking each other is a pretty huge part of a positive team dynamic. The line to unfair favoritism is thin but a team of high-skilled engineers that don't like each other will most likely perform worse than a team that likes each other but has a bit worse average skill level. Sometimes a person that is regarded as low skill can motivate other team members to hugely increase their productivity by building a positive atmosphere.
- mech422 6y ago
  >>Sometimes a person that is regarded as low skill can motivate other team members to hugely increase their productivity by building a positive atmosphere. Umm - Isn't that just part of the job? Most workers are expected to at least not _negatively_ impact the working environment, while being at least as competent as their co-workers. This actually sounds more like someone trying to get co-workers to cover their short-comings for them...
jacquesm 6y ago
He should have realized that he lacked the knowledge and experience to tell his boss to fuck off because on day #2 on the job you simply can not make this decision in a way that won't kill the company.
- SMFloris 6y ago
  It is pretty interesting how this conversation goes. CTO: I can't do that on my 2nd day. CEO: I thought your interests align with the company. It is your job to align everyone under you to our direction. CTO: Yes, of course. Right away.

big5 6y ago

KISS. Let the coin to make decision, flip it. You are all welcome.

jacquesm 6y ago
That would have been just as good or better.