4 ms·

Anecdote time. As I’ve moved into larger companies and am shackled by OKRs, I am enjoying my work a lot less and feel under more pressure than ever but am getti

Anecdote time. As I’ve moved into larger companies and am shackled by OKRs, I am enjoying my work a lot less and feel under more pressure than ever but am getting less useful work done. It feels like a lack of trust and assumes the organization is run very efficiently and fairly—which I don’t think any company can truly claim. People just seem to adjust by gaming these systems instead of putting useful effort into their work.

twh270 5y ago
I agree fully with this. I'm currently at a small company (which has a different set of challenges), but my experience is that large employers come up with flavor-of-the-year useless metrics in an attempt to measure progress towards goals and productivity.
- senojsitruc 5y ago
  Google Plus. https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-just-tied-employee-bonuses-to-the-success-of-the-googles-social-strategy-2011-4?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-just-tied-employe...
hallway_monitor 5y ago
Moving to a small company is the only antidote, for the most part. Actually, pretty much everything is better at a small company. For anyone who's only worked at a mega corp or a "Unicorn" where working 60+ hours is expected, working with a small group of people who all know each other will change your life.
- chrsig 5y ago
  it can depend on the stage of life of the small company. I've been at my current company from it's series A, through a series B, a layoff, sale of one of it's IPs/customer bases, and ultimately sale to a holding company. I agree with your overall point -- working with a small group of people who all know each other is great. I've had the opportunity to work with some people for the better part of a decade, and having that kind history with coworkers can be a real boon for communication and planning. It's also much more impactful when a coworker decides to leave. The real shift towards a more sane work style happened after the acquisition by the holding company. It came with a layoff at the start, which was really disruptive. However, since then, there's been a huge focus on profitability rather than growth. Willingness to make big investments is much more conservative.
outworlder 5y ago
> As I’ve moved into larger companies and am shackled by OKRs, I am enjoying my work a lot less and feel under more pressure than ever but am getting less useful work done. Ditto. At this point I feel that spending my entire day writing emails (even though I'm on engineering) would not only look better but would meet OKRs, while getting zero actual useful work done. I hate this fad.
- DiggyJohnson 5y ago
  This is precisely the cause of my burnout this month, at a huge aerospace company you’ve heard of. I felt like I wasn’t able to motivate myself to do the work, because I was incentivized to do what you described. I ended up doing both, poorly, but honestly I was able to make it a shockingly long time (I’m surprised I was the one to realize and decide to leave, no manager conversation yet).
jldugger 5y ago
> As I’ve moved into larger companies and am shackled by OKRs Try moving into a large company _without_ OKRs. How much redundancy do you need to buy to achieve your service reliability goals? Well, you can decide on any goal you want but management now has the right to declare the decision wrong post-hoc: Got an outage? Should have spent more Didn't have an outage? Why are we wasting all this money? And of course, by avoiding any public commitment like an OKR, they are somehow absolved of accountability in the matter.

twh270 5y ago

I agree fully with this. I'm currently at a small company (which has a different set of challenges), but my experience is that large employers come up with flavor-of-the-year useless metrics in an attempt to measure progress towards goals and productivity.

senojsitruc 5y ago
Google Plus. https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-just-tied-employee-bonuses-to-the-success-of-the-googles-social-strategy-2011-4?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-just-tied-employe...

hallway_monitor 5y ago

Moving to a small company is the only antidote, for the most part. Actually, pretty much everything is better at a small company. For anyone who's only worked at a mega corp or a "Unicorn" where working 60+ hours is expected, working with a small group of people who all know each other will change your life.

chrsig 5y ago
it can depend on the stage of life of the small company. I've been at my current company from it's series A, through a series B, a layoff, sale of one of it's IPs/customer bases, and ultimately sale to a holding company. I agree with your overall point -- working with a small group of people who all know each other is great. I've had the opportunity to work with some people for the better part of a decade, and having that kind history with coworkers can be a real boon for communication and planning. It's also much more impactful when a coworker decides to leave. The real shift towards a more sane work style happened after the acquisition by the holding company. It came with a layoff at the start, which was really disruptive. However, since then, there's been a huge focus on profitability rather than growth. Willingness to make big investments is much more conservative.

outworlder 5y ago

> As I’ve moved into larger companies and am shackled by OKRs, I am enjoying my work a lot less and feel under more pressure than ever but am getting less useful work done. Ditto. At this point I feel that spending my entire day writing emails (even though I'm on engineering) would not only look better but would meet OKRs, while getting zero actual useful work done. I hate this fad.

DiggyJohnson 5y ago
This is precisely the cause of my burnout this month, at a huge aerospace company you’ve heard of. I felt like I wasn’t able to motivate myself to do the work, because I was incentivized to do what you described. I ended up doing both, poorly, but honestly I was able to make it a shockingly long time (I’m surprised I was the one to realize and decide to leave, no manager conversation yet).

jldugger 5y ago

> As I’ve moved into larger companies and am shackled by OKRs Try moving into a large company _without_ OKRs. How much redundancy do you need to buy to achieve your service reliability goals? Well, you can decide on any goal you want but management now has the right to declare the decision wrong post-hoc: Got an outage? Should have spent more Didn't have an outage? Why are we wasting all this money? And of course, by avoiding any public commitment like an OKR, they are somehow absolved of accountability in the matter.