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This post links to an article, “People can read their manager’s mind”, which is truly a gem. It argues that employees have the time and the incentive to figure

by fwlr 4y ago

This post links to an article, “People can read their manager’s mind”, which is truly a gem. It argues that employees have the time and the incentive to figure out what their manager truly values, and the employees will then pay lip service to, or even outright ignore, what the manager requires of them - in favor of doing what they know the manager truly values, because the manager will subconsciously reward them for the “truly valued” stuff more than the “stated goals” stuff. The examples are illustrative: “ A manager truly appreciates original mathematical ideas. The [same] manager requests to rid the code of crash-causing bugs, because customers resent crashes. The most confident people ignore him and spend time coming up with original math. The less confident people spend time chasing bugs, are upset by the lack of recognition, and eventually leave for greener pastures. At any given moment, the code base is ridden by crash-causing bugs. “ A manager enjoys "software architecture", design patterns, and language lawyer type of knowledge. The [same] manager requests to cooperate better with neighboring teams who are upset by missing functionality in the beautifully architected software. People will tend to keep designing more patterns into the program.” It suggests a unique and amusing approach to hiring management: executives should find people who truly value the goals of the executive, hire them as managers, and (perhaps via intentional lack of oversight!) give them leeway to let their subconscious values impact their work, thus making their minds legible to mind-reading employees.

lmm 4y ago
> It suggests a unique and amusing approach to hiring management: executives should find people who truly value the goals of the executive, hire them as managers, and (perhaps via intentional lack of oversight!) give them leeway to let their subconscious values impact their work, thus making their minds legible to mind-reading employees. "Hire people who share your values/goals and let them get on with things" is hardly a novel insight. The trouble is that aligning them is hard.
- fwlr 4y ago
  >”Hire people who share your values/goals and let them get on with things" is hardly a novel insight. Right, because it’s not the same thing. If you hear “hire people who share your values/goals and let them get on with things” and implement it, you’ll likely end up focusing on hiring developers/engineers and giving them resources, rather than hiring managers and giving them fiefdoms to run according to their whims. You’ll also likely end up hiring people whose true values match your true values and whose stated goals match your stated goals, but this argues that you want people whose true values match your stated goals, and you should ignore their stated goals. Despite sounding similar I think it is really quite different. (Arguably, this is WHY we find “alignment” so hard: we are constantly aligning their values with our values and their goals with our goals, and we are even achieving that alignment some of the time, and yet things still don’t work - instead we should be trying to align their values with our goals, because this is the kind of alignment that produces results)
  - lmm 4y ago
    > this argues that you want people whose true values match your stated goals, and you should ignore their stated goals. Only if your goal is your stated goals and not your true values, which by definition it isn't.
- ReactiveJelly 4y ago
  The trouble for me as a dumb programmer has been that "values" is really vague and squishy and I only know it as political dogwhistles. The concrete examples above of valuing fancy math or design patterns over product quality helped clear it up.

by fwlr 4y ago

lmm 4y ago

> It suggests a unique and amusing approach to hiring management: executives should find people who truly value the goals of the executive, hire them as managers, and (perhaps via intentional lack of oversight!) give them leeway to let their subconscious values impact their work, thus making their minds legible to mind-reading employees. "Hire people who share your values/goals and let them get on with things" is hardly a novel insight. The trouble is that aligning them is hard.

fwlr 4y ago
>”Hire people who share your values/goals and let them get on with things" is hardly a novel insight. Right, because it’s not the same thing. If you hear “hire people who share your values/goals and let them get on with things” and implement it, you’ll likely end up focusing on hiring developers/engineers and giving them resources, rather than hiring managers and giving them fiefdoms to run according to their whims. You’ll also likely end up hiring people whose true values match your true values and whose stated goals match your stated goals, but this argues that you want people whose true values match your stated goals, and you should ignore their stated goals. Despite sounding similar I think it is really quite different. (Arguably, this is WHY we find “alignment” so hard: we are constantly aligning their values with our values and their goals with our goals, and we are even achieving that alignment some of the time, and yet things still don’t work - instead we should be trying to align their values with our goals, because this is the kind of alignment that produces results)
- lmm 4y ago
  > this argues that you want people whose true values match your stated goals, and you should ignore their stated goals. Only if your goal is your stated goals and not your true values, which by definition it isn't.
ReactiveJelly 4y ago
The trouble for me as a dumb programmer has been that "values" is really vague and squishy and I only know it as political dogwhistles. The concrete examples above of valuing fancy math or design patterns over product quality helped clear it up.