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"Professional employees whose work is merit-based don't need labor unions." You're living in a dream world, Neo.
by ziggus 5y ago
"Professional employees whose work is merit-based don't need labor unions."
You're living in a dream world, Neo.
- paisawalla 5y agoWhat's your argument? That talented people can't get ahead at Google or competing employers?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ziggus 5y agoBureaucracies often impose arbitrary measures of success on teams and employees that often have nothing at all to do with merit or productivity or any other measure that a reasonable person would use, and reduce or increase staffing levels based on those measures. See 'stack ranking' for a perfect example.
- paisawalla 5y agoWhat's the evidence that stack ranking is unreasonable or that it doesn't correlate (even imperfectly) to merit? I think it's pretty trivial to construct a case that, given pressure to apply resources efficiently and to incentivize growing performance, stack ranking or similar are reasonable approaches.
- ziggus 5y agoStack ranking is based on whatever metrics team leaders/supervisors want to use. It often becomes a simple popularity contest, and leads to an 'every person for themselves' culture which can stifle innovation and collaboration. Even in cases where there's a quantitative metric used for ranking, it's often subject to gaming, such as the use of number of commits or ticket closures. Also, stack ranking doesn't account for any flaws in the systems of the company itself - if you have poor processes that hinder productivity, it's going to artificially diminish the rankings of employees that have to use or are subject to those processes. There's a reason why companies that use it tend to have much higher turnover than companies that don't - because it makes for a really unpleasant workplace.