5 ms·

urgh. I hate how accurate this is. The lack of any data or measurement absolutely kills me. Its all just based on exec feels.

zxcvbn4038 4y ago
I think there are legitimately people out there who can’t function without other people being in the same room as them - and if they happen to be in a position of authority where they can inflict that on other people it causes a lot of problems for everyone else. I’m in a situation like that now where even though that person is six levels above me and will never know my name or speak with me directly, they are constantly trolling everyone to make sure people have cameras turned on, reminding everyone that remote work is a privilege (no it is keeping us alive, disease monkey), and they are plotting regional and global meetups for teams, or buying everyone VR headsets, etc. But to what ends? Why would I want to get into a COVID tube and fly to Germany to eat a throw-away processed turkey sandwich and bag of chips with co-workers and then fly back in another COVID tube a day later? What would be accomplished by that? Considering the airfare and hotel costs those have to be the most expensive bag lunches ever made.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  The VR headset thing makes me laugh. I'd like to see a higherup wear a VR headset for more than 5 minutes.
  - zxcvbn4038 4y ago
    Luckily those little telepresence robots are out of vogue so nobody has proposed (threatened?) to make us use those yet.
edgyquant 4y ago
What should they base it on? Lines of code or jira tickets? Most of the metrics you can name are things we as devs have insisted for years are not adequate to measure dev productivity.
- greedo 4y ago
  They should base it on their gut feelings. The same gut feelings that led them to over-hire for the last two years. These "leaders" are clowns with no true leadership skills.
rumdonut 4y ago
I understand your observation but I respectfully don't think the conclusion is the case - at a large company I have seen an internal report that shows a substantial issue with productivity that points directly to a lack of in-person interactions as the cause. The Amazon CEO not citing data in his decree does not mean there's no data, or that the data is poor, or that the decision is based on a gut feeling. Amazon is a self-declared data driven company with 1.5 million employees - they absolutely have run the numbers on as big of a decision as this and I would be surprised that a decision as high-stakes as this (both execs and WFHers would agree) would not have due-diligence data to back it up. It is just not shown. The CEO is exercising his authority instead. I think after 3 years of being unable to fix these issues, the decision is final and hence the reliance on authority as an argument instead of data. Giving people data to try to pick apart would just be an unproductive activity that would only serve to damage efforts - it's not meant to be a conversation.
- greedo 4y ago
  You would be surprised that Amazon would make a decision based on anything but facts? Measuring productivity, especially for office workers is extremely difficult except in gross terms. You mention these "issues" that they've been unable to address, but as you say, there's no issues coming down from the Emperor. And companies that consider good communications with their employees to be "an unproductive activity" are shit companies. There's a reason that Amazon has such a bad reputation amongst all the FAANG. Whether you work in one of the fulfillment warehouses, or are a coder hoping to avoid the mandatory PIPs, it's the worst.
- patrick451 4y ago
  The amount of trust you have in the S-team is truly mind boggling.
patrick451 4y ago
This is normal. All these companies claim be data driven, but when it comes down to it all of these decisions are based on feels. This applies just as much to technical rules as it does business decisions from the CEO. For example, when I have gone through infosec reviews, and I asked the reviewer to justify some rule with data, they can't do it, because it's just some wacky scenario they dreamed up but have no clue how probable/improbable it actually is.

zxcvbn4038 4y ago

I think there are legitimately people out there who can’t function without other people being in the same room as them - and if they happen to be in a position of authority where they can inflict that on other people it causes a lot of problems for everyone else. I’m in a situation like that now where even though that person is six levels above me and will never know my name or speak with me directly, they are constantly trolling everyone to make sure people have cameras turned on, reminding everyone that remote work is a privilege (no it is keeping us alive, disease monkey), and they are plotting regional and global meetups for teams, or buying everyone VR headsets, etc. But to what ends? Why would I want to get into a COVID tube and fly to Germany to eat a throw-away processed turkey sandwich and bag of chips with co-workers and then fly back in another COVID tube a day later? What would be accomplished by that? Considering the airfare and hotel costs those have to be the most expensive bag lunches ever made.

wildrhythms 4y ago
The VR headset thing makes me laugh. I'd like to see a higherup wear a VR headset for more than 5 minutes.
- zxcvbn4038 4y ago
  Luckily those little telepresence robots are out of vogue so nobody has proposed (threatened?) to make us use those yet.

edgyquant 4y ago

What should they base it on? Lines of code or jira tickets? Most of the metrics you can name are things we as devs have insisted for years are not adequate to measure dev productivity.

greedo 4y ago
They should base it on their gut feelings. The same gut feelings that led them to over-hire for the last two years. These "leaders" are clowns with no true leadership skills.

rumdonut 4y ago

I understand your observation but I respectfully don't think the conclusion is the case - at a large company I have seen an internal report that shows a substantial issue with productivity that points directly to a lack of in-person interactions as the cause. The Amazon CEO not citing data in his decree does not mean there's no data, or that the data is poor, or that the decision is based on a gut feeling. Amazon is a self-declared data driven company with 1.5 million employees - they absolutely have run the numbers on as big of a decision as this and I would be surprised that a decision as high-stakes as this (both execs and WFHers would agree) would not have due-diligence data to back it up. It is just not shown. The CEO is exercising his authority instead. I think after 3 years of being unable to fix these issues, the decision is final and hence the reliance on authority as an argument instead of data. Giving people data to try to pick apart would just be an unproductive activity that would only serve to damage efforts - it's not meant to be a conversation.

greedo 4y ago
You would be surprised that Amazon would make a decision based on anything but facts? Measuring productivity, especially for office workers is extremely difficult except in gross terms. You mention these "issues" that they've been unable to address, but as you say, there's no issues coming down from the Emperor. And companies that consider good communications with their employees to be "an unproductive activity" are shit companies. There's a reason that Amazon has such a bad reputation amongst all the FAANG. Whether you work in one of the fulfillment warehouses, or are a coder hoping to avoid the mandatory PIPs, it's the worst.
patrick451 4y ago
The amount of trust you have in the S-team is truly mind boggling.

patrick451 4y ago

This is normal. All these companies claim be data driven, but when it comes down to it all of these decisions are based on feels. This applies just as much to technical rules as it does business decisions from the CEO. For example, when I have gone through infosec reviews, and I asked the reviewer to justify some rule with data, they can't do it, because it's just some wacky scenario they dreamed up but have no clue how probable/improbable it actually is.