5 ms·

Deming sometimes used bus drivers as an example. Some of them might think it's not their job to smile and be nice to passengers. They're hired to drive the bus,

by kqr 5y ago

Deming sometimes used bus drivers as an example. Some of them might think it's not their job to smile and be nice to passengers. They're hired to drive the bus, and perhaps help out in emergencies, but not much beyond that. However, being nice to passengers (performing "caring labour" as Graeber would have put it) increases the chances that people choose the bus over e.g. the metro or something else. Deming concluded that it's always your job to do whatever increases the chances of the company you're working for staying in business. I still haven't found a good way to phrase it, but I'm starting to think that for knowledge/creative work, this can be specialised to something like, "it's your job to teach others to do what you think your job is." For knowledge/creative organisations to stay in business over the long term, they need to continuously innovate, and for innnovation you want people to be strong generalists. Not just because it lets them spot opportunities they otherwise might not, but also because it lets the organisation run more efficiently with less paperwork, and because it gives people the autonomy they need to think clearly about things.

wanderingmind 5y ago
If the bus drivers were paid by the number of people who take the bus sure, but when are paid by the travel route distance, they have no obligation to do what they are not paid to do.
- mtsr 5y ago
  What a nihilistic view. Not every aspect that’s part of your job needs to be included in your variable compensation in order to be done, does it?
  - iamacyborg 5y ago
    They’re employed to do a specific job, if they’re not rewarded for bringing the company more money, why should they care?
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      Because human beings are not coin operated robots?
      - iamacyborg 5y ago
        So they should do unpaid emotional labour for free?
        pc86 5y ago
        If you equate smiling at someone, or just being generally courteous, with "emotional labor," you need to make an emergency appointment with your therapist. Being a good human being more often than not (occasional bad moods notwithstanding) should be a non-functional requirement for any job where you interact with other people. I have no problem with anyone, in any role, getting fired simply for being an asshole. The world would be a happier and better place for it.
        xboxnolifes 5y ago
        > If you equate smiling at someone, or just being generally courteous, with "emotional labor," you need to make an emergency appointment with your therapist. This entire conversation started based on an example that smiling brought economic benefits, not that you should do it because of socializing benefits. Answering in economic terms only makes sense.
        iamacyborg 5y ago
        Since when is not smiling at people being an arsehole? I don’t want a bus driver to fake cheerfulness. He’s there to get me from a to b, not to pretend to be my friend.
        alar44 5y ago
        Smiling is not pretending to be someone's friend. Seriously, if this all sounds like alien talk, you should see a counselor or therapist.
- alichapman 5y ago
  Yes but if the number of people on the bus dropped to zero do you think their employers would keep running the route?
  - krisoft 5y ago
    The passenger count is so heavily influenced by factors outside of the bus driver’s influence that this example doesn’t make sense. Passengers don’t abandon bus routes because the bus driver didn’t smile at them. They abandon routes when the schedule is inconvenient, there are better alternatives to the bus, the fare is too high etc etc. None of these are in the control of the bus driver.
  - throwaway6532 5y ago
    My old bus route to work used to amuse me greatly because on it there were two drivers who were the polar opposite of one another. One guy I assumed had previously been the pilot of a commercial airliner because he used to greet everyone who got onto the bus with that sort of demeanor and make announcements etc. Always brightened my day. The other guy was the grumpiest piece of shit bus driver I've seen anywhere in my life who would frequently berate passengers and oftentimes frighten unsuspecting foreigners. Everyone who needed to get to where they were going showed up and took the bus regardless. It's about the least important variable there is and it averages out to getting a reasonably OK bus driver almost all the time across the different busses you take and the different times of day you take them.
FeepingCreature 5y ago
Ah, this must be why bus drivers are commonly paid in company shares. Incentive alignment! Makes sense. Wait, they're not? So why should they care, when their bosses don't care even enough to set up a direct reward to bus performance and some way for them to have agency over that reward? Though it would be cool if there was a bus service that had direct, fine-grained association between curteous behavior and reward in the form of immediate payment and future business, possibly mediated via ratings - I was making a joking reference to Uber here, but "Uber for busses" is genuinely something that I want to exist. Ie. not "Uber Bus", but the standard Uber model of engaging a driver directly, only this time applied to longer timespans to allow better schedule coordination. For instance, some way to say "Hey, I need a bus from X to Y some time between 6 and 7 every workday for the next six months, which time and pickup location is cheapest?" would allow for some pretty cool optimizations in routing. Possibly combined with a Kickstarter-like model where a bunch of people can express prospective interest.
- scarface74 5y ago
  If I’m working for a private company. Guess how much I care about “equity” that will statistically be meaningless? On the other hand, I did implementations as a Senior Develop/de facto “cloud architect” that moved the needle meaningfully at a company with $5 million in revenue. Those same types of implementations happen multiple times daily at a company worth over $1 trillion. Nothing I’m going to ever do will ever have a meaningful affect on the stock price of the company I work at now.
  - FeepingCreature 5y ago
    Kind of sounds like the company share price is too coarse-grained. That sort of thing might work better if the company was split into separately traded sub-units, of which the parent company owns some controlling fraction of voting shares. Admittedly the bureaucratic overhead starts being awkward.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      There are four companies worth over 1 trillion. How could you split any of them in a way that my small implementations by their standards would make a difference? I purposefully focus on the “nose of the camel in the tent” type work. I like smaller proof of concept + training type projects.
heavenlyblue 5y ago
> However, being nice to passengers (performing "caring labour" as Graeber would have put it) increases the chances that people choose the bus over e.g. the metro or something else. Increases is a relative measure. It may be 10% or it may be 0.0001%. At very small values it becomes basically a zero because humans are non-divisible unit at which point your theory is basically in the rabbit’s hole of magic and wizardry.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by kqr 5y ago

wanderingmind 5y ago

If the bus drivers were paid by the number of people who take the bus sure, but when are paid by the travel route distance, they have no obligation to do what they are not paid to do.

mtsr 5y ago
What a nihilistic view. Not every aspect that’s part of your job needs to be included in your variable compensation in order to be done, does it?
- iamacyborg 5y ago
  They’re employed to do a specific job, if they’re not rewarded for bringing the company more money, why should they care?
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    Because human beings are not coin operated robots?
    - iamacyborg 5y ago
      So they should do unpaid emotional labour for free?
      - pc86 5y ago
        If you equate smiling at someone, or just being generally courteous, with "emotional labor," you need to make an emergency appointment with your therapist. Being a good human being more often than not (occasional bad moods notwithstanding) should be a non-functional requirement for any job where you interact with other people. I have no problem with anyone, in any role, getting fired simply for being an asshole. The world would be a happier and better place for it.
        xboxnolifes 5y ago
        > If you equate smiling at someone, or just being generally courteous, with "emotional labor," you need to make an emergency appointment with your therapist. This entire conversation started based on an example that smiling brought economic benefits, not that you should do it because of socializing benefits. Answering in economic terms only makes sense.
        iamacyborg 5y ago
        Since when is not smiling at people being an arsehole? I don’t want a bus driver to fake cheerfulness. He’s there to get me from a to b, not to pretend to be my friend.
        alar44 5y ago
        Smiling is not pretending to be someone's friend. Seriously, if this all sounds like alien talk, you should see a counselor or therapist.
alichapman 5y ago
Yes but if the number of people on the bus dropped to zero do you think their employers would keep running the route?
- krisoft 5y ago
  The passenger count is so heavily influenced by factors outside of the bus driver’s influence that this example doesn’t make sense. Passengers don’t abandon bus routes because the bus driver didn’t smile at them. They abandon routes when the schedule is inconvenient, there are better alternatives to the bus, the fare is too high etc etc. None of these are in the control of the bus driver.
- throwaway6532 5y ago
  My old bus route to work used to amuse me greatly because on it there were two drivers who were the polar opposite of one another. One guy I assumed had previously been the pilot of a commercial airliner because he used to greet everyone who got onto the bus with that sort of demeanor and make announcements etc. Always brightened my day. The other guy was the grumpiest piece of shit bus driver I've seen anywhere in my life who would frequently berate passengers and oftentimes frighten unsuspecting foreigners. Everyone who needed to get to where they were going showed up and took the bus regardless. It's about the least important variable there is and it averages out to getting a reasonably OK bus driver almost all the time across the different busses you take and the different times of day you take them.

FeepingCreature 5y ago

Ah, this must be why bus drivers are commonly paid in company shares. Incentive alignment! Makes sense. Wait, they're not? So why should they care, when their bosses don't care even enough to set up a direct reward to bus performance and some way for them to have agency over that reward? Though it would be cool if there was a bus service that had direct, fine-grained association between curteous behavior and reward in the form of immediate payment and future business, possibly mediated via ratings - I was making a joking reference to Uber here, but "Uber for busses" is genuinely something that I want to exist. Ie. not "Uber Bus", but the standard Uber model of engaging a driver directly, only this time applied to longer timespans to allow better schedule coordination. For instance, some way to say "Hey, I need a bus from X to Y some time between 6 and 7 every workday for the next six months, which time and pickup location is cheapest?" would allow for some pretty cool optimizations in routing. Possibly combined with a Kickstarter-like model where a bunch of people can express prospective interest.

scarface74 5y ago
If I’m working for a private company. Guess how much I care about “equity” that will statistically be meaningless? On the other hand, I did implementations as a Senior Develop/de facto “cloud architect” that moved the needle meaningfully at a company with $5 million in revenue. Those same types of implementations happen multiple times daily at a company worth over $1 trillion. Nothing I’m going to ever do will ever have a meaningful affect on the stock price of the company I work at now.
- FeepingCreature 5y ago
  Kind of sounds like the company share price is too coarse-grained. That sort of thing might work better if the company was split into separately traded sub-units, of which the parent company owns some controlling fraction of voting shares. Admittedly the bureaucratic overhead starts being awkward.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    There are four companies worth over 1 trillion. How could you split any of them in a way that my small implementations by their standards would make a difference? I purposefully focus on the “nose of the camel in the tent” type work. I like smaller proof of concept + training type projects.

heavenlyblue 5y ago

> However, being nice to passengers (performing "caring labour" as Graeber would have put it) increases the chances that people choose the bus over e.g. the metro or something else. Increases is a relative measure. It may be 10% or it may be 0.0001%. At very small values it becomes basically a zero because humans are non-divisible unit at which point your theory is basically in the rabbit’s hole of magic and wizardry.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]