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> If you're a manager, how do you tell if your team is spending 50% of the time slacking vs. working on a problem that is twice as difficult as everyone thought

> If you're a manager, how do you tell if your team is spending 50% of the time slacking vs. working on a problem that is twice as difficult as everyone thought? I... talk to them? Ask them questions? Probe to see if they're running into issues? Offer help, support, possible solutions, or just be their rubber duck? If I sense there might be issues, I probe into the team, solicit anonymous feedback, and otherwise discretely ask for other people's perspectives. Is it a perfect science? No. Can you get fleeced by staff for a while? Absolutely. But the low performers eventually reveal themselves if you're paying any attention. And the reality is the vast majority of people genuinely want to do a good job. So my preference is to trust my staff to be honest and hard working, recognizing the rare possibility that I could end up the victim of a sociopath who deliberately tries to abuse that trust.

Cadwhisker 5y ago
I can't agree anough with this approach.
aeternum 5y ago
Sure, but then that really boils down to: be subjective, use your manager's intuition. It's what most managers do, but I'd argue it is not very effective. People regularly overestimate their ability to judge others. Most rigorous studies have shown that judges make worse decisions when they see defendants in person vs. sentencing based on facts and history alone. Intelligence agencies are frequently tricked by moles despite intense training. If judges and counter-intel agents regularly fail at this, isn't it foolish to think that eng. managers have some secret sauce?
- CarelessExpert 5y ago
  > If judges and counter-intel agents regularly fail at this, isn't it foolish to think that eng. managers have some secret sauce? But I'm not interrogating prisoners about terrorist plots. I'm not regularly dealing with scam artists and criminals. I'm dealing with people, my staff, folks that I trust and respect; trust and respect based on years of experience working together, building relationships, while solving hard problems. The question was: "How do you tell if your team is spending 50% of the time slacking vs. working on a problem that is twice as difficult as everyone thought?" Well, guess what? I am never, ever, going to have a perfect, 100% guaranteed sense of how productive people are. That's not how the world works. There is no "secret sauce", nor did I claim there was. Your mistake is in thinking I'm trying to verify, with perfect accuracy, precisely how effectively everyone is performing and whether they're living up to their claims of productivity and effectiveness. I can only guess this is based on a misconception of what management is; that my job is to be a surrogate helicopter parent, policing everyone to make sure they're doing their jobs properly. But that's not my job. Or, at least, it sure isn't how I do my job. Rather, my goal is to hire good team members who are independent, driven, focused, and reliable; give them challenging problems and the support they need to solve them; coach them to be effective contributors; identify strengths and amplify them; identify areas for improvement and coach/train; identify long-term aspirations and career goals and set out plans to achieve them; when they achieve those goals, to recognize that fact in changes to title/roles/responsibilities. In short, I treat them like functioning, responsible adults. And so, I talk to them. As I said before, yes, there is always "the rare possibility that I could end up the victim of a sociopath who deliberately tries to abuse that trust." And I'm fine with that.

Cadwhisker 5y ago

I can't agree anough with this approach.

aeternum 5y ago

Sure, but then that really boils down to: be subjective, use your manager's intuition. It's what most managers do, but I'd argue it is not very effective. People regularly overestimate their ability to judge others. Most rigorous studies have shown that judges make worse decisions when they see defendants in person vs. sentencing based on facts and history alone. Intelligence agencies are frequently tricked by moles despite intense training. If judges and counter-intel agents regularly fail at this, isn't it foolish to think that eng. managers have some secret sauce?

CarelessExpert 5y ago
> If judges and counter-intel agents regularly fail at this, isn't it foolish to think that eng. managers have some secret sauce? But I'm not interrogating prisoners about terrorist plots. I'm not regularly dealing with scam artists and criminals. I'm dealing with people, my staff, folks that I trust and respect; trust and respect based on years of experience working together, building relationships, while solving hard problems. The question was: "How do you tell if your team is spending 50% of the time slacking vs. working on a problem that is twice as difficult as everyone thought?" Well, guess what? I am never, ever, going to have a perfect, 100% guaranteed sense of how productive people are. That's not how the world works. There is no "secret sauce", nor did I claim there was. Your mistake is in thinking I'm trying to verify, with perfect accuracy, precisely how effectively everyone is performing and whether they're living up to their claims of productivity and effectiveness. I can only guess this is based on a misconception of what management is; that my job is to be a surrogate helicopter parent, policing everyone to make sure they're doing their jobs properly. But that's not my job. Or, at least, it sure isn't how I do my job. Rather, my goal is to hire good team members who are independent, driven, focused, and reliable; give them challenging problems and the support they need to solve them; coach them to be effective contributors; identify strengths and amplify them; identify areas for improvement and coach/train; identify long-term aspirations and career goals and set out plans to achieve them; when they achieve those goals, to recognize that fact in changes to title/roles/responsibilities. In short, I treat them like functioning, responsible adults. And so, I talk to them. As I said before, yes, there is always "the rare possibility that I could end up the victim of a sociopath who deliberately tries to abuse that trust." And I'm fine with that.