13 ms·

A finding I had when I took a management role was that it's really hard actually getting anyone to do a good job of something. This is utterly frustrating. So

by baz00 3y ago

A finding I had when I took a management role was that it's really hard actually getting anyone to do a good job of something. This is utterly frustrating. So many people actually don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality as long as it's perceived they are working for the hours required. I've found that the teams usually divide into functional elites that do the work unattended and I'm dealing with micromanaging the rest and trying to educate them. I've spoken to managers in other sectors and it's the same for them too.

scottLobster 3y ago
It's an issue of incentives, and sadly my experience is it's often not the immediate management that's the problem, it's structural issues with the company that low-level managers have little if any say in. Speaking for my own experience, program-level and above management often doesn't put their money where their mouth is. Maintenance is chronically under-funded, well-articulated and respectful feedback is ignored with a thank-you. Hell more than once I've been forced to spend an entire day in a conference room with all the other relevant devs to do a "Root Cause Analysis" of a given recent crisis, and we took it seriously each time and came up with genuine solutions. But said solutions required more hardware, more maintenance, more stuff that no one wanted to budget for. You work in that environment long enough, you learn to clock in and clock out. If you allow yourself to give a shit you'll just be constantly tearing your hair out. Those of us with some objective sense of professionalism usually evolve into the functional elites you mention, but I completely understand those who go the other way.
- rgifford 3y ago
  Sociopaths, the clueless and losers. This great essay analyzing The Office argues that in a modern business context you're one of the three. [1] Those "functional elites" you mentioned? Usually they're working 20-50% more for 0-25% percent more pay. They're called the clueless because they've been conned into working more for less, usually under some clever guise like company being family or company values or the promise of a promotion that's always a cycle or two away. The essay then goes on to argue that losers are really just the clueless once they "get it." Losers understand the treadmill and lean into the tedium always aiming to save their time by playing dumb as needed. Sociopaths break out of the cycle by operating only with concern for power and switching up how they talk to folks based on whether they're clueless, losers or fellow sociopaths. Sociopaths speak in powertalk -- an exchange of information on clear terms. It's usually veiled because the clueless and losers listen in and it makes them feel uncomfortable. If it weren't veiled it would probably sound like lawyer-jargon with lots of plausible deniability, conditions, arguing and explicit shared definitions. Losers and clueless speak in their own languages based on who they're talking with. It's basically just lots of trying to feel okay... except for when it comes to losers speaking with sociopaths. There the only communication is straight talk, which is basically just direct requests of a master-slave dynamic (i.e. "do this"). The essay is well worth the read! 1. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-ii-posturetalk-powertalk-babytalk-and-gametalk/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-...
  - KirillPanov 3y ago
    > Sociopaths break out of the cycle by operating only with concern for power There are other ways to break out of the cycle. Keep looking.
    - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
      > There are other ways to break out of the cycle. Keep looking. What are these ways (besides founding a startup or something similar)?
      - sph 3y ago
        Working for oneself is how we're meant to work, not to be a cog in someone else's machine. It is sad that for the past ~100 years it has become the norm and we idolize entrepreneurs, as if they are mythical creatures.
        Draiken 3y ago
        I hard disagree here. That's what capitalism wants us to evolve into: individual enterprises. But no, there's nothing inherent in the universe or human nature that determines individualism as the true way of working. You don't have to go far to see people contributing to bigger causes that are not owned by someone else. Open source is a great example of this. The main reason people idolize entrepreneurs is because they symbolize capitalism's perfect individual. There's a reason society today wants everyone to be an "entrepreneur", but it's not some higher meaning. It's just capitalism.
        sph 3y ago
        > The main reason people idolize entrepreneurs is because they symbolize capitalism's perfect individual That's some deep revisionism right there. Humans have worked for themselves, for no master, since before we became Homo Sapiens. The big societal achievement of capitalism is killing any entrepreneurial spirit and telling you you need to go to a good school and then find a good employer that takes care of all of your needs.
- unicornmama 3y ago
  > It's an issue of incentives Please do not just oversimplfy a challenging problem into just "incentives". Some people lack resilience, and they will collapse under the pressures of professional and personal life. Some people lack ambition and drive, they don't want to exceed their level of productivity no matter what you do. It's not just a matter of incentives. If you offer the right incentives and opportunites to the wrong people, you will not get results. The right approach here is to avoid hiring these peoples (not a perfect science). In absence of that, provide feedback expetations to provide a resaonable opportuntiy to change their behavior, then move them to other projects or terminate them. And there are organization where non of this is possible - like government and many corporate IT.
  - BlargMcLarg 3y ago
    >If you offer the right incentives and opportunites to the wrong people, Then you didn't offer the right incentives and opportunities. GP simplified it correctly. Most people aren't lazy or malicious in the face of good rewards, they just realize there's no point working 5x for 1.1x the income after putting in 3x the effort fighting for that 10% raise. If you can't filter them out through hiring practices or termination, you're doing something wrong or you're experiencing the downside of supply/demand. The only non-trivial thing here is the owners pushing the downside of that market back onto the managers to magically solve, because we all know saying "that's not possible" is going to make you the target of 'disciplinary actions' instead. Welcome to the catch-22 that is management, enjoy your stay.
  - anonymous_sorry 3y ago
    > Some people lack resilience, and they will collapse under the pressures of professional and personal life. Some people lack ambition and drive, they don't want to exceed their level of productivity no matter what you do. Few people don't want to improve their productivity. Improving your productivity makes you more valuable. But plenty of people don't want to work harder. There is of course a difference! I deal poorly with stress, and am thankful I have reached a point in my career where I can earn pretty good money in positions where I'm not pushing myself too hard. I enjoy learning of course, and do want to get better. But that's in balance with the demands of family and the happiness and fulfillment I find in other pursuits. I have been promoted reasonably quickly over the past 5 years without playing political games. My productivity has improved through experience, and it seems like that got recognised through promotion. But I guess it's possible I got lucky with managers making bad decisions in my favour. I don't know if you'd want to hire me. I'm not sure I'd want to work for you. Do you find success with your approach compared to peers with a more empathetic approach to management?
re-thc 3y ago
> So many people actually don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality as long as it's perceived they are working for the hours required. Well they are paid for the hours required. That's the problem (as some commenters have already mentioned). It's not just the pay. It is often unfair. It might not be you but I've seen plenty of managers reward those that do a lot less compared to others. When people start to experience these things, how. do you expect them to care?
starwatch 3y ago
I've found that culture is king in terms of governing what's shipped. From day 1 new hires are looking at what their peers are doing, and more importantly what's being tolerated by the manager and the rest of the team. As an uninvited specific action recommendation: I've made it a habit to look through PR's (merged and unmerged) regularly. I point out opportunities for improvement, and more importantly I call out excellent solutions. The excellence can be in the form of elegance or just hard graft finding a bug. It's a small action that's additive and doesn't interrupt work. But it does wonders at setting the tone. One thing I've found very hard indeed is if the team you manage is surrounded by peers that "don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality". However, if you reinforce your culture of excellence it becomes resilient to it ... and then the tricky thing becomes avoiding arrogance within the team.
- BlargMcLarg 3y ago
  >As an uninvited specific action recommendation: I've made it a habit to look through PR's (merged and unmerged) regularly. If you did this in an environment with undercapacity, with the exception of being a very well respected or lead dev, I'd eventually call you out for being a snake trying to set the tone of development with nothing better to do. I had a colleague do this and its obnoxious. Especially because >reinforce your culture of excellence is almost entirely subjective.
  - starwatch 3y ago
    I can see how that'd be weird for everyone to do it (unless they're themselves reviewing the PR). But in this context I am the engineering manager so it's my job to have oversight - so maybe that helps in my team? One other bit that's probably worth mentioning is that I'm quick to point out when I've learnt something new from the PR in question. I guess I bundle that with "call out excellent solutions" - but it's a slightly different thing. > is almost entirely subjective. Of course. But even the regular discussion of what amounts to excellence helps move teams in that direction. What we're trying to get away from is "don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality" which exists in bucket-loads in giant corporations and I want my teams to have no part of it.
harimau777 3y ago
That's kind of why I want to be a manager. As a developer I'm tired of having to work with code written from people who don't give a fuck. At least as a manager, it wouldn't be my direct problem. If the developers want to crunch to fix last minute issues because they didn't do it right the first time then that's their decision; but I don't want to be part of it anymore.
zgluck 3y ago
Making software is a bit special in that you can't really make use of people like that. In e.g. a supermarket you can.
- baz00 3y ago
  That is exactly the problem. Business assumes highly technical people are fungible. They are not. There are very few highly competent people on the market. Not enough to cover realistic requirements for business. So they hire anyone who makes duck noises assuming they are ducks.
  - lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
    > So they hire anyone who makes duck noises assuming they are ducks. Isn't it more accurate to say they hire anybody making duck noises assuming they are wolves? Technical interviews in no way identify the skills developers are going to use in their daily work.
    - baz00 3y ago
      Finding technically competent people is easy. Finding people who continue to give a fuck the moment their trial period is over is difficult.
      - whywhywhywhy 3y ago
        Used to be "You can pay people to show up but you can't pay people to care" now it's more "You can pay people... they might show up"
      - hajile 3y ago
        It's demotivating when you know you're doing 80% of the work, but getting paid the same as the other 5 people on the team. When a company finds a great dev, they seldom have the sense to pay that person enough to make them feel motivated to outperform their colleagues.
      - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rndmwlk 3y ago
>So many people actually don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality as long as it's perceived they are working for the hours required. I've found that's due to completely backwards incentives. Most people don't give a fuck because they aren't rewarded properly. If I do an excellent job and complete whatever task I'm given well ahead of schedule the only reward I get is more work. Even if I sandbag a bit and do an excellent job and complete on time, often the reward for being "better" is more responsibility or more difficult tasks (without compensation). Some folks want that, many do not. Dollars to doughnuts if your team members know that quality work on schedule will be actually rewarded then you'll find more of those members capable of producing that quality of work.
xracy 3y ago
Honestly, this sounds to me a bit like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you want people to care about things, you have to listen to what they care about... I can influence some of what people care about as a manager, but it's long-term steering a spaceship a few degrees at a time. I think too many people see managing a team as "managing the people to do good work." When, in fact, managing is much more about managing the right projects/opportunities into your team's scope. I very rarely tell people what to do, because ultimately, I don't have any power to change what they do. And they'll respect me, and the project, more if they think they're making the decision instead of me.
- mhss 3y ago
  > If you want people to care about things, you have to listen to what they care about Ultimately we are all paid to solve the problems the business needs solved, even if the solution is boring and not 'exciting' or 'cutting edge' tech (which is often). The best people finds excitement and challenge in almost any work and are self-motivated. Sure, as a manager you should try your very best to shield the team from crap work and have a healthy balance, understand their interests and find opportunities that match (even outside your team), but ultimately also work is work and is not always, or even often, possible to have super exciting bleeding edge work that fits everyone's interests. Even harder when people have a very narrow set of interests or they don't even know, they're picky, etc. > I very rarely tell people what to do, because ultimately, I don't have any power to change what they do. Are you a manager? you very much should be able to change what they do if you are. If project x comes along with twice the value of the current project someone is working on, you very much should be able to preempt what someone is working on. It's not ideal and we all try to avoid project churn, but it happens and needs to be handled effectively by the manager. > And they'll respect me, and the project, more if they think they're making the decision instead of me. I mean, delegation and ownership are fine as a mechanism to boost engagement and career growth, but you can't delegate everything (otherwise what are you doing again?). Also, what's up with the "if they think" wording here. Are they making the decision or not, are you tricking them into thinking they're making the decision?
  - re-thc 3y ago
teslashill 3y ago
[dead]

by baz00 3y ago

scottLobster 3y ago

It's an issue of incentives, and sadly my experience is it's often not the immediate management that's the problem, it's structural issues with the company that low-level managers have little if any say in. Speaking for my own experience, program-level and above management often doesn't put their money where their mouth is. Maintenance is chronically under-funded, well-articulated and respectful feedback is ignored with a thank-you. Hell more than once I've been forced to spend an entire day in a conference room with all the other relevant devs to do a "Root Cause Analysis" of a given recent crisis, and we took it seriously each time and came up with genuine solutions. But said solutions required more hardware, more maintenance, more stuff that no one wanted to budget for. You work in that environment long enough, you learn to clock in and clock out. If you allow yourself to give a shit you'll just be constantly tearing your hair out. Those of us with some objective sense of professionalism usually evolve into the functional elites you mention, but I completely understand those who go the other way.

rgifford 3y ago
Sociopaths, the clueless and losers. This great essay analyzing The Office argues that in a modern business context you're one of the three. [1] Those "functional elites" you mentioned? Usually they're working 20-50% more for 0-25% percent more pay. They're called the clueless because they've been conned into working more for less, usually under some clever guise like company being family or company values or the promise of a promotion that's always a cycle or two away. The essay then goes on to argue that losers are really just the clueless once they "get it." Losers understand the treadmill and lean into the tedium always aiming to save their time by playing dumb as needed. Sociopaths break out of the cycle by operating only with concern for power and switching up how they talk to folks based on whether they're clueless, losers or fellow sociopaths. Sociopaths speak in powertalk -- an exchange of information on clear terms. It's usually veiled because the clueless and losers listen in and it makes them feel uncomfortable. If it weren't veiled it would probably sound like lawyer-jargon with lots of plausible deniability, conditions, arguing and explicit shared definitions. Losers and clueless speak in their own languages based on who they're talking with. It's basically just lots of trying to feel okay... except for when it comes to losers speaking with sociopaths. There the only communication is straight talk, which is basically just direct requests of a master-slave dynamic (i.e. "do this"). The essay is well worth the read! 1. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-ii-posturetalk-powertalk-babytalk-and-gametalk/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-...
- KirillPanov 3y ago
  > Sociopaths break out of the cycle by operating only with concern for power There are other ways to break out of the cycle. Keep looking.
  - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
    > There are other ways to break out of the cycle. Keep looking. What are these ways (besides founding a startup or something similar)?
    - sph 3y ago
      Working for oneself is how we're meant to work, not to be a cog in someone else's machine. It is sad that for the past ~100 years it has become the norm and we idolize entrepreneurs, as if they are mythical creatures.
      - Draiken 3y ago
        I hard disagree here. That's what capitalism wants us to evolve into: individual enterprises. But no, there's nothing inherent in the universe or human nature that determines individualism as the true way of working. You don't have to go far to see people contributing to bigger causes that are not owned by someone else. Open source is a great example of this. The main reason people idolize entrepreneurs is because they symbolize capitalism's perfect individual. There's a reason society today wants everyone to be an "entrepreneur", but it's not some higher meaning. It's just capitalism.
        sph 3y ago
        > The main reason people idolize entrepreneurs is because they symbolize capitalism's perfect individual That's some deep revisionism right there. Humans have worked for themselves, for no master, since before we became Homo Sapiens. The big societal achievement of capitalism is killing any entrepreneurial spirit and telling you you need to go to a good school and then find a good employer that takes care of all of your needs.
unicornmama 3y ago
> It's an issue of incentives Please do not just oversimplfy a challenging problem into just "incentives". Some people lack resilience, and they will collapse under the pressures of professional and personal life. Some people lack ambition and drive, they don't want to exceed their level of productivity no matter what you do. It's not just a matter of incentives. If you offer the right incentives and opportunites to the wrong people, you will not get results. The right approach here is to avoid hiring these peoples (not a perfect science). In absence of that, provide feedback expetations to provide a resaonable opportuntiy to change their behavior, then move them to other projects or terminate them. And there are organization where non of this is possible - like government and many corporate IT.
- BlargMcLarg 3y ago
  >If you offer the right incentives and opportunites to the wrong people, Then you didn't offer the right incentives and opportunities. GP simplified it correctly. Most people aren't lazy or malicious in the face of good rewards, they just realize there's no point working 5x for 1.1x the income after putting in 3x the effort fighting for that 10% raise. If you can't filter them out through hiring practices or termination, you're doing something wrong or you're experiencing the downside of supply/demand. The only non-trivial thing here is the owners pushing the downside of that market back onto the managers to magically solve, because we all know saying "that's not possible" is going to make you the target of 'disciplinary actions' instead. Welcome to the catch-22 that is management, enjoy your stay.
- anonymous_sorry 3y ago
  > Some people lack resilience, and they will collapse under the pressures of professional and personal life. Some people lack ambition and drive, they don't want to exceed their level of productivity no matter what you do. Few people don't want to improve their productivity. Improving your productivity makes you more valuable. But plenty of people don't want to work harder. There is of course a difference! I deal poorly with stress, and am thankful I have reached a point in my career where I can earn pretty good money in positions where I'm not pushing myself too hard. I enjoy learning of course, and do want to get better. But that's in balance with the demands of family and the happiness and fulfillment I find in other pursuits. I have been promoted reasonably quickly over the past 5 years without playing political games. My productivity has improved through experience, and it seems like that got recognised through promotion. But I guess it's possible I got lucky with managers making bad decisions in my favour. I don't know if you'd want to hire me. I'm not sure I'd want to work for you. Do you find success with your approach compared to peers with a more empathetic approach to management?

re-thc 3y ago

> So many people actually don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality as long as it's perceived they are working for the hours required. Well they are paid for the hours required. That's the problem (as some commenters have already mentioned). It's not just the pay. It is often unfair. It might not be you but I've seen plenty of managers reward those that do a lot less compared to others. When people start to experience these things, how. do you expect them to care?

starwatch 3y ago

I've found that culture is king in terms of governing what's shipped. From day 1 new hires are looking at what their peers are doing, and more importantly what's being tolerated by the manager and the rest of the team. As an uninvited specific action recommendation: I've made it a habit to look through PR's (merged and unmerged) regularly. I point out opportunities for improvement, and more importantly I call out excellent solutions. The excellence can be in the form of elegance or just hard graft finding a bug. It's a small action that's additive and doesn't interrupt work. But it does wonders at setting the tone. One thing I've found very hard indeed is if the team you manage is surrounded by peers that "don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality". However, if you reinforce your culture of excellence it becomes resilient to it ... and then the tricky thing becomes avoiding arrogance within the team.

BlargMcLarg 3y ago
>As an uninvited specific action recommendation: I've made it a habit to look through PR's (merged and unmerged) regularly. If you did this in an environment with undercapacity, with the exception of being a very well respected or lead dev, I'd eventually call you out for being a snake trying to set the tone of development with nothing better to do. I had a colleague do this and its obnoxious. Especially because >reinforce your culture of excellence is almost entirely subjective.
- starwatch 3y ago
  I can see how that'd be weird for everyone to do it (unless they're themselves reviewing the PR). But in this context I am the engineering manager so it's my job to have oversight - so maybe that helps in my team? One other bit that's probably worth mentioning is that I'm quick to point out when I've learnt something new from the PR in question. I guess I bundle that with "call out excellent solutions" - but it's a slightly different thing. > is almost entirely subjective. Of course. But even the regular discussion of what amounts to excellence helps move teams in that direction. What we're trying to get away from is "don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality" which exists in bucket-loads in giant corporations and I want my teams to have no part of it.

harimau777 3y ago

That's kind of why I want to be a manager. As a developer I'm tired of having to work with code written from people who don't give a fuck. At least as a manager, it wouldn't be my direct problem. If the developers want to crunch to fix last minute issues because they didn't do it right the first time then that's their decision; but I don't want to be part of it anymore.

zgluck 3y ago

Making software is a bit special in that you can't really make use of people like that. In e.g. a supermarket you can.

baz00 3y ago
That is exactly the problem. Business assumes highly technical people are fungible. They are not. There are very few highly competent people on the market. Not enough to cover realistic requirements for business. So they hire anyone who makes duck noises assuming they are ducks.
- lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
  > So they hire anyone who makes duck noises assuming they are ducks. Isn't it more accurate to say they hire anybody making duck noises assuming they are wolves? Technical interviews in no way identify the skills developers are going to use in their daily work.
  - baz00 3y ago
    Finding technically competent people is easy. Finding people who continue to give a fuck the moment their trial period is over is difficult.
    - whywhywhywhy 3y ago
      Used to be "You can pay people to show up but you can't pay people to care" now it's more "You can pay people... they might show up"
    - hajile 3y ago
      It's demotivating when you know you're doing 80% of the work, but getting paid the same as the other 5 people on the team. When a company finds a great dev, they seldom have the sense to pay that person enough to make them feel motivated to outperform their colleagues.
    - 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

rndmwlk 3y ago

>So many people actually don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality as long as it's perceived they are working for the hours required. I've found that's due to completely backwards incentives. Most people don't give a fuck because they aren't rewarded properly. If I do an excellent job and complete whatever task I'm given well ahead of schedule the only reward I get is more work. Even if I sandbag a bit and do an excellent job and complete on time, often the reward for being "better" is more responsibility or more difficult tasks (without compensation). Some folks want that, many do not. Dollars to doughnuts if your team members know that quality work on schedule will be actually rewarded then you'll find more of those members capable of producing that quality of work.

xracy 3y ago

Honestly, this sounds to me a bit like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you want people to care about things, you have to listen to what they care about... I can influence some of what people care about as a manager, but it's long-term steering a spaceship a few degrees at a time. I think too many people see managing a team as "managing the people to do good work." When, in fact, managing is much more about managing the right projects/opportunities into your team's scope. I very rarely tell people what to do, because ultimately, I don't have any power to change what they do. And they'll respect me, and the project, more if they think they're making the decision instead of me.

mhss 3y ago
> If you want people to care about things, you have to listen to what they care about Ultimately we are all paid to solve the problems the business needs solved, even if the solution is boring and not 'exciting' or 'cutting edge' tech (which is often). The best people finds excitement and challenge in almost any work and are self-motivated. Sure, as a manager you should try your very best to shield the team from crap work and have a healthy balance, understand their interests and find opportunities that match (even outside your team), but ultimately also work is work and is not always, or even often, possible to have super exciting bleeding edge work that fits everyone's interests. Even harder when people have a very narrow set of interests or they don't even know, they're picky, etc. > I very rarely tell people what to do, because ultimately, I don't have any power to change what they do. Are you a manager? you very much should be able to change what they do if you are. If project x comes along with twice the value of the current project someone is working on, you very much should be able to preempt what someone is working on. It's not ideal and we all try to avoid project churn, but it happens and needs to be handled effectively by the manager. > And they'll respect me, and the project, more if they think they're making the decision instead of me. I mean, delegation and ownership are fine as a mechanism to boost engagement and career growth, but you can't delegate everything (otherwise what are you doing again?). Also, what's up with the "if they think" wording here. Are they making the decision or not, are you tricking them into thinking they're making the decision?
- re-thc 3y ago

teslashill 3y ago

[dead]