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Disclaimer: The following is not related to the topic but is instead a rant inspired by reading the article. A good article, but it is unfortunate that it star

by F_J_H 15y ago

Disclaimer: The following is not related to the topic but is instead a rant inspired by reading the article. A good article, but it is unfortunate that it starts by categorically slamming all authors who write about employee motivation and retention: It’s written by folks who actively use words like motivation and retention and generally don’t have a clue about the daily necessity of keeping your team professionally content because they’ve either never done the work or have forgotten how it’s done. Why is this necessary? I find it nauseating. In fact, when I read or hear someone who basically states “everyone is stupid but me, and all who have come before me have been doing it wrong” in their opening spiel, it’s a good sign to me that the speaker/author has some blind spots and may not be considering all perspectives. Maybe one reason I find it so nauseating is because I have suffered from this myself, and I’m still tempted at times to point out where others have failed and where I’m so much smarter. (After all, “we judge most harshly in others that which we are most guilty of ourselves” – can’t remember who said that.) It wasn’t until a close mentor confronted me on it, and basically taught me that life goes a lot better when you don’t walk around thinking you are smarter than everyone else. Biggest reason? It shows. You may think you are hiding it, but your face may be wearing a subtle smirk while others are talking, and they can see in your eyes that you aren’t listening but instead are formulating a rebuttal. Steve Blank teaches this same concept (i.e. don’t think you are smarter than everyone else) in some of his blogs, although more related to sales. And good articles like this on the importance of humility reinforce this for me: http://blogs.hbr.org/tjan/2011/07/why-some-people-have-all-the-l.html http://blogs.hbr.org/tjan/2011/07/why-some-people-have-all-t... In a Fortune article on “the best advice I ever got”, the CEO of Pepsi, Indra Nooyi said the best advice she ever received was from her father, who taught her to “always assume positive intent” which I have found gets you a lot further than “assume everyone is an idiot”, which has been the stance of many programmers I have met. (Fortune article link: http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0804/gallery.bestadvice.fortune/7.html http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0804/gallery.bes...), I’ve heard it said that “people don’t quit their jobs, they quit their manager”. Maybe in IT we are boring people by ceasing every opportunity to show our underlings how smart we are… *Edit: Typos

bartonfink 15y ago
I think Rands is railing against reactive HR departments who wait for problems (e.g. bored employees) to come to a head before trying to deal with them. It's too late to salvage a bad situation once an employee is fed up enough with a job to give notice. Even if you manage to keep her on in the short term, she's always going to have the stigma of "quitter" and you're just prolonging the inevitable. The HR directors, etc. who get brought in to circumvent policy and get these people the raises or transfers they were really after are missing the point - set things up so that things don't get so bad people need to quit to make themselves heard. It's the same problem that gets brought up with software. The hero isn't the engineer who looks ahead and avoids problems, the hero is the guy who stays late to fix a problem after putting everyone in a bad position. Reaction is an anti-pattern no matter where it occurs.

by F_J_H 15y ago

bartonfink 15y ago

I think Rands is railing against reactive HR departments who wait for problems (e.g. bored employees) to come to a head before trying to deal with them. It's too late to salvage a bad situation once an employee is fed up enough with a job to give notice. Even if you manage to keep her on in the short term, she's always going to have the stigma of "quitter" and you're just prolonging the inevitable. The HR directors, etc. who get brought in to circumvent policy and get these people the raises or transfers they were really after are missing the point - set things up so that things don't get so bad people need to quit to make themselves heard. It's the same problem that gets brought up with software. The hero isn't the engineer who looks ahead and avoids problems, the hero is the guy who stays late to fix a problem after putting everyone in a bad position. Reaction is an anti-pattern no matter where it occurs.