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Quoth Zuck: > “And part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think

by titzer 4y ago

Quoth Zuck: > “And part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might just say that this place isn’t for you. And that self-selection is okay with me.” Wow. Just. Wow. Why not inject some more dysfunction into an already strained relationship with employees and callously but passively aggressively deal with a seriously broken hiring pipeline in the laziest way possible? If a company can't be bothered to set performance expectations that are measurable and actionable, but just expects to push people out by "turning up the heat", that's an abject failure of a workplace. There used to be things like quarterly/yearly performance reviews, ratings, even "performance improvement plans" for under-performing employees--you know, clear expectations, clear communications, criteria and steps and timelines put forward when someone is not meeting expectations. You know, sometimes life happens to people and they slow down a quarter or two, maybe because of a family crisis, divorce, child, death in the family, traumatic event. Global pandemic? 2 years of isolation WFH? Yeah, there might be reasons... But, from the top, the message "these people will find their way to the door if we make work suck enough"--I couldn't imagine anything more demoralizing.

frogpelt 4y ago
I don't think you can infer from this article that Meta isn't setting new, measurable and actionable performance expectations internally. Though you could be inferring that from working there or from all the other news about them.
cmollis 4y ago
'too many employees, but few work'.. this is misleading.. given the spin, you might think this indicates that they hired these people to do specific line-of-business things, and they didn't get done. However, what actually happened was they hired a bunch of people to do.. something.. but they weren't sure what.. all they were told is that they need to hire them.. then they realized they might have 'a down quarter or two'.. apple's killing their advertising business, and they're thinking.. 'hey wait a minute.. our headcount's gone up.. no one in middle-management seems to know what they're doing (which is actually our fault.. but we can't say that), so we'll call the people we hired lazy unmotivated clowns and get rid them that way.' Cue the high-fives.
twblalock 4y ago
I've been at places where I would love to hear the CEO say that. Being forced to work with poor performers, lazy people, and people who deliver poor quality results is frustrating and demoralizing. Those kinds of people can stick around for years, especially in good times when the company is making so much money that leadership doesn't need to care. Netflix is one of the few large companies that has a culture of culling the herd even in good times, and I wish more large companies would take that approach.
- tomuli38 4y ago
  From what I understand, Netflix doesn't cull the herd — they get rid of good (but not excellent) performers too. The article is talking about actually cullung the herd and getting rid of the mediocre performers who previously could skate by.
  - deeptote 4y ago
    Yeah true, but this coming from the likes of Facebook and Google, two companies well known for warehousing talent... it mostly just comes across as tone deaf and naive. For years they've literally hired very smart and capable people, and then shoehorned them into working on some ad-tech engine that an intern could do, just so they didn't work for a competitor. And now they're angry that their employees "don't work hard?" Holy fuck, for being Google, they sure have some idiots in leadership.
    - TheAceOfHearts 4y ago
      This sounds plausible, but I'd love to hear if others agree with this claim. Isn't this a failure of the free market? This leads to the obvious question, which is: what could be done to improve optimal talent distribution? It seems bad to society if rich companies can monopolize talent to control development and output in order to ensure greater political power and control.
      - paganel 4y ago
mlword 4y ago
I don't understand this either. He has to trust entire layers of useless middle management to get accurate performance numbers. All he'll get are invented numbers on a piece of paper (metaphorically speaking). The ones who leave may be dissatisfied with the artificial goals.
WatchDog 4y ago
Setting measurable performance expectations for software roles is notoriously difficult. Setting quantitative targets often leads to developers optimizing for whatever metric you set, while compromising on the details that aren't quantifiable. For all of the problems and biases that qualitative performance review has, I think it makes for a more enjoyable and engaging environment.
fiveyearsinarow 4y ago
There are people who were performing well but had temporary setbacks due to circumstances, and there are people who wanted to coast from day one. It's easy to tell them apart if you have worked with them closely.

by titzer 4y ago

frogpelt 4y ago

I don't think you can infer from this article that Meta isn't setting new, measurable and actionable performance expectations internally. Though you could be inferring that from working there or from all the other news about them.

cmollis 4y ago

'too many employees, but few work'.. this is misleading.. given the spin, you might think this indicates that they hired these people to do specific line-of-business things, and they didn't get done. However, what actually happened was they hired a bunch of people to do.. something.. but they weren't sure what.. all they were told is that they need to hire them.. then they realized they might have 'a down quarter or two'.. apple's killing their advertising business, and they're thinking.. 'hey wait a minute.. our headcount's gone up.. no one in middle-management seems to know what they're doing (which is actually our fault.. but we can't say that), so we'll call the people we hired lazy unmotivated clowns and get rid them that way.' Cue the high-fives.

twblalock 4y ago

I've been at places where I would love to hear the CEO say that. Being forced to work with poor performers, lazy people, and people who deliver poor quality results is frustrating and demoralizing. Those kinds of people can stick around for years, especially in good times when the company is making so much money that leadership doesn't need to care. Netflix is one of the few large companies that has a culture of culling the herd even in good times, and I wish more large companies would take that approach.

tomuli38 4y ago
From what I understand, Netflix doesn't cull the herd — they get rid of good (but not excellent) performers too. The article is talking about actually cullung the herd and getting rid of the mediocre performers who previously could skate by.
- deeptote 4y ago
  Yeah true, but this coming from the likes of Facebook and Google, two companies well known for warehousing talent... it mostly just comes across as tone deaf and naive. For years they've literally hired very smart and capable people, and then shoehorned them into working on some ad-tech engine that an intern could do, just so they didn't work for a competitor. And now they're angry that their employees "don't work hard?" Holy fuck, for being Google, they sure have some idiots in leadership.
  - TheAceOfHearts 4y ago
    This sounds plausible, but I'd love to hear if others agree with this claim. Isn't this a failure of the free market? This leads to the obvious question, which is: what could be done to improve optimal talent distribution? It seems bad to society if rich companies can monopolize talent to control development and output in order to ensure greater political power and control.
    - paganel 4y ago

mlword 4y ago

I don't understand this either. He has to trust entire layers of useless middle management to get accurate performance numbers. All he'll get are invented numbers on a piece of paper (metaphorically speaking). The ones who leave may be dissatisfied with the artificial goals.

WatchDog 4y ago

Setting measurable performance expectations for software roles is notoriously difficult. Setting quantitative targets often leads to developers optimizing for whatever metric you set, while compromising on the details that aren't quantifiable. For all of the problems and biases that qualitative performance review has, I think it makes for a more enjoyable and engaging environment.

fiveyearsinarow 4y ago

There are people who were performing well but had temporary setbacks due to circumstances, and there are people who wanted to coast from day one. It's easy to tell them apart if you have worked with them closely.