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> When you swap out somebody who does a decent job for another person who performs at about the same level it's not really that noticeable. Which interestingly

> When you swap out somebody who does a decent job for another person who performs at about the same level it's not really that noticeable. Which interestingly is the same effect as swapping out somebody who does nothing for someone else who does nothing.

bigwavedave 5y ago
> When you swap out somebody who does a decent job for another person who performs at about the same level it's not really that noticeable. >> Which interestingly is the same effect as swapping out somebody who does nothing for someone else who does nothing. I disagree. Swapping out a decent senior dev for a decent senior dev doesn't have a net negative effect like swapping out a senior dev who does nothing for another senior dev who does nothing. In scenario one, you have a senior dev who ramps up in a decent amount of time, does the work they're paid for, and isn't a waste of time and money like a bad hire. In the second scenario, you have a senior dev who's just as damaging as their predecessor, but you've lost the time and money you've invested in onboarding them while also paying the ongoing opportunity cost you could have avoided with a decent hire and any technical debt they accrue gets tossed on the pile with the rest of the debt their predecessor accrued. It would have been better to have just kept the first guy instead of wasting time, money, and morale on someone new.
Spivak 5y ago
How in a forum of techies man of whom have spent the good part of their careers trying to get companies to not see IT and Ops as a cost center and "nothing is wrong so why are we paying you" do we so casually dismiss other people's work?
toast0 5y ago
Benign neglect is what I'm looking for from top management. A CEO might be like a fire extinguisher; you need to have one, but it rarely does anything but sit there; but, when it's needed, it better work? Actually though, setting up and maintaining the organization so it can self manage is harder than it looks. Of course, some CEOs have good results with meddling too. It's hard to have two CEOs and A/B test them, although RIM/Blackberry had two CEOs for a while, and there's some other companies that tried it too.

bigwavedave 5y ago

> When you swap out somebody who does a decent job for another person who performs at about the same level it's not really that noticeable. >> Which interestingly is the same effect as swapping out somebody who does nothing for someone else who does nothing. I disagree. Swapping out a decent senior dev for a decent senior dev doesn't have a net negative effect like swapping out a senior dev who does nothing for another senior dev who does nothing. In scenario one, you have a senior dev who ramps up in a decent amount of time, does the work they're paid for, and isn't a waste of time and money like a bad hire. In the second scenario, you have a senior dev who's just as damaging as their predecessor, but you've lost the time and money you've invested in onboarding them while also paying the ongoing opportunity cost you could have avoided with a decent hire and any technical debt they accrue gets tossed on the pile with the rest of the debt their predecessor accrued. It would have been better to have just kept the first guy instead of wasting time, money, and morale on someone new.

Spivak 5y ago

How in a forum of techies man of whom have spent the good part of their careers trying to get companies to not see IT and Ops as a cost center and "nothing is wrong so why are we paying you" do we so casually dismiss other people's work?

toast0 5y ago

Benign neglect is what I'm looking for from top management. A CEO might be like a fire extinguisher; you need to have one, but it rarely does anything but sit there; but, when it's needed, it better work? Actually though, setting up and maintaining the organization so it can self manage is harder than it looks. Of course, some CEOs have good results with meddling too. It's hard to have two CEOs and A/B test them, although RIM/Blackberry had two CEOs for a while, and there's some other companies that tried it too.