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"I can't let me team work from home, they might not work hard." "Maybe you should work to improve what you measure and how you encourage feedback. It is normal

"I can't let me team work from home, they might not work hard." "Maybe you should work to improve what you measure and how you encourage feedback. It is normally a good idea to have ways to tell if people are doing a good job for what you are paying them to do." Measuring this stuff is really, really hard. If you're a manager who's non-technical it's almost impossible. No-one is saying that you can't slack off while at the office, or that you are guaranteed to slack off if you're working from home, but I think the discussion would be better if some of the more rabid pro-remote people acknowledged that for a lot of people there is a big difference. In the office: - You're limited in what slacking options are available - You're surrounded by coworkers who at least act as though they mostly work which can be motivating - You know your boss is around and could stop by, so you don't want to do something too outlandish At home you could go play your xbox for 8 hours while responding to DMs, and then say "investigated the bug, think I made some progress" during stand-up and in many places get away with that for a very, very long time. I don't think some lighter version of this is that uncommon. Sure, you can take the position that it's managements responsibility to figure this out and fire you but understand that this type of thing is why many companies are against remote, especially with how vehemently most developers reject any form of tracking.

luffapi 5y ago
> Sure, you can take the position that it's managements responsibility to figure this out and fire you but understand that this type of thing is why many companies are against remote, especially with how vehemently most developers reject any form of tracking. The position to take that leads not just to a successful wfh environment, but a great work environment in general is to not worry about “slacking off”. People are either producing results, or not. Especially in software development, developers will have spurts of great productivity and plenty of downtime. Trust, freedom and positive motivation are the keys to success.
- librish 5y ago
  I think that assumes that you have reasonably self-motivating employees and work that is often interesting which definitely isn't always the case. How do you suggest a non-technical manager tells slacking apart from when things just take unexpectedly longer?
  - luffapi 5y ago
    Things take as long as they take. Certainly, they will take longer if a “non technical manager” is cracking the whip on the team. Hire good people, managers included. Keep trust high. Keep motivation high and keep autonomy high and I assure you software will get produced at a high quality. Software development is a high leverage creative field. You want to maximize for developer flow, creativity and comfort.
    - librish 5y ago
      Not everyone can afford or attract top level developers. Saying Keep motivation high and keep autonomy high and I assure you software will get produced at a high quality. is handwaving some extremely hard problems, especially if you're not working on an exciting problem and can't afford $200K salaries. You didn't really answer the question. Say I'm a non-technical manager and I suspect one of my employees is slacking off, they just respond with "oh, the load router was misconfigured, luckily I caught it in time. I'll need to hot patch it, it will probably take another 2 weeks" what do I do?
      - luffapi 5y ago
        If you can’t afford to pay for good developers, then you shouldn’t expect good software to be written quickly. That’s something only good developers can accomplish. I think what you want is not possible. More process, monitoring… is only going to slow down your development. I also think if a developer manager is going to be non-technical that they should be able to demonstrate extraordinary developer relation skills. Otherwise, what are you paying them for?
        PeterisP 5y ago
        If you require good developers and managers with "extraordinary developer relation skills", and do manage to hire them out of wherever they worked before and fire all that don't satisfy that requirement, where do all the average developers and average managers work? Picking out only the best people is something that a particular company can choose to do, but it can't be a recommendation for the whole industry - what do we do with the other half of the tech workforce? We need reasonable processes that work somewhat well for most developers and most managers.
minikites 5y ago
>Measuring this stuff is really, really hard. If you're a manager who's non-technical it's almost impossible. The job of a manager is supposed to be hard, that's why it pays well. If you want an easy job, do something else.
- imbnwa 5y ago
  Insane that developers interview for their jobs daily, usually first thing in the morning, but management can be as inept as it wishes
  - warkdarrior 5y ago
    This comment only shows that you have no idea what a manager does or that they are responsible to their bosses as well.
41209 5y ago
You can also just not do anything when you're in the office. Is someone who writes bad code all day really less valuable than someone who gets their tasks done, and then plays Xbox
TigeriusKirk 5y ago
If you can't tell the difference between a remote employee who is working hard and a remote employee who is slacking... ...is there really a meaningful difference?
- librish 5y ago
  Yes. If you could clone the same person working on the same task it would be trivial for anyone to see which one is working hard and which isn't. The problem is that you can't do that so now you're left with having to measure their performance in some other way. That is very hard and noisy.
  - jfrunyon 5y ago
    Why is your idea of an employee's value relative to who that employee is?
    - librish 5y ago
      Mainly that people are good at different things so I wouldn't want to compare two people on only one task. I don't really see how that interjection is particularly relevant for the point I'm making though.
      - jfrunyon 5y ago
        Okay then what do you compare people on? If you're not comparing them against other people who can do the same job... The point you made is that you think it's only a fair comparison if you can clone the same person. Which is simply false unless your determination of a person's value is dependent upon that person rather than upon their output.
jfrunyon 5y ago
> Sure, you can take the position that it's managements responsibility to figure this out and fire you Absolutely it is. > how vehemently most developers reject any form of tracking. Huh? I don't know a single professional developer who doesn't use version control. Usually some sort of bug/todo/issue tracking, as well.

luffapi 5y ago

> Sure, you can take the position that it's managements responsibility to figure this out and fire you but understand that this type of thing is why many companies are against remote, especially with how vehemently most developers reject any form of tracking. The position to take that leads not just to a successful wfh environment, but a great work environment in general is to not worry about “slacking off”. People are either producing results, or not. Especially in software development, developers will have spurts of great productivity and plenty of downtime. Trust, freedom and positive motivation are the keys to success.

librish 5y ago
I think that assumes that you have reasonably self-motivating employees and work that is often interesting which definitely isn't always the case. How do you suggest a non-technical manager tells slacking apart from when things just take unexpectedly longer?
- luffapi 5y ago
  Things take as long as they take. Certainly, they will take longer if a “non technical manager” is cracking the whip on the team. Hire good people, managers included. Keep trust high. Keep motivation high and keep autonomy high and I assure you software will get produced at a high quality. Software development is a high leverage creative field. You want to maximize for developer flow, creativity and comfort.
  - librish 5y ago
    Not everyone can afford or attract top level developers. Saying Keep motivation high and keep autonomy high and I assure you software will get produced at a high quality. is handwaving some extremely hard problems, especially if you're not working on an exciting problem and can't afford $200K salaries. You didn't really answer the question. Say I'm a non-technical manager and I suspect one of my employees is slacking off, they just respond with "oh, the load router was misconfigured, luckily I caught it in time. I'll need to hot patch it, it will probably take another 2 weeks" what do I do?
    - luffapi 5y ago
      If you can’t afford to pay for good developers, then you shouldn’t expect good software to be written quickly. That’s something only good developers can accomplish. I think what you want is not possible. More process, monitoring… is only going to slow down your development. I also think if a developer manager is going to be non-technical that they should be able to demonstrate extraordinary developer relation skills. Otherwise, what are you paying them for?
      - PeterisP 5y ago
        If you require good developers and managers with "extraordinary developer relation skills", and do manage to hire them out of wherever they worked before and fire all that don't satisfy that requirement, where do all the average developers and average managers work? Picking out only the best people is something that a particular company can choose to do, but it can't be a recommendation for the whole industry - what do we do with the other half of the tech workforce? We need reasonable processes that work somewhat well for most developers and most managers.

minikites 5y ago

>Measuring this stuff is really, really hard. If you're a manager who's non-technical it's almost impossible. The job of a manager is supposed to be hard, that's why it pays well. If you want an easy job, do something else.

imbnwa 5y ago
Insane that developers interview for their jobs daily, usually first thing in the morning, but management can be as inept as it wishes
- warkdarrior 5y ago
  This comment only shows that you have no idea what a manager does or that they are responsible to their bosses as well.

41209 5y ago

You can also just not do anything when you're in the office. Is someone who writes bad code all day really less valuable than someone who gets their tasks done, and then plays Xbox

TigeriusKirk 5y ago

If you can't tell the difference between a remote employee who is working hard and a remote employee who is slacking... ...is there really a meaningful difference?

librish 5y ago
Yes. If you could clone the same person working on the same task it would be trivial for anyone to see which one is working hard and which isn't. The problem is that you can't do that so now you're left with having to measure their performance in some other way. That is very hard and noisy.
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  Why is your idea of an employee's value relative to who that employee is?
  - librish 5y ago
    Mainly that people are good at different things so I wouldn't want to compare two people on only one task. I don't really see how that interjection is particularly relevant for the point I'm making though.
    - jfrunyon 5y ago
      Okay then what do you compare people on? If you're not comparing them against other people who can do the same job... The point you made is that you think it's only a fair comparison if you can clone the same person. Which is simply false unless your determination of a person's value is dependent upon that person rather than upon their output.

jfrunyon 5y ago

> Sure, you can take the position that it's managements responsibility to figure this out and fire you Absolutely it is. > how vehemently most developers reject any form of tracking. Huh? I don't know a single professional developer who doesn't use version control. Usually some sort of bug/todo/issue tracking, as well.