3 ms·

I would suggest that the problem is not KPIs (or Agile, or whatever else is ruining your particular company). It's shitty management. KPIs (and Agile, and $buzz

by elric 3y ago

I would suggest that the problem is not KPIs (or Agile, or whatever else is ruining your particular company). It's shitty management. KPIs (and Agile, and $buzzword) can be useful, when done right. If you get hit in the face with a hammer, is the hammer the problem? Or the idiot who swung the hammer at you? Time and time again I've seen managers come up with a Great Idea(tm). It works for a little while. And then it turns into a shitshow because it goes from being a useful idea to being dogma.

rightbyte 3y ago
Before Agile management didn't have a hammer to swing at you in the first place. Micromanagement required actual work. Agile has automated micromanagement for management ...
- elric 3y ago
  Hmm, you might have a point there. Still, it's just a hammer. It's blameless. I guess these management fads just make it easier for lousy managers to do damage?
  - jq-r 3y ago
    Exactly. I would even say that hammer is a too nice of a word for what I would call a whip. Or even a rope. Lousy management gives you a rope which you can hang yourself with. That way they don't have to bother to get their hands dirty. For the life of me I couldn't really understand why 9 months ago when a new CEO came to our company and first thing he said "measure everything, every team should have public OKRs", everyone from my team jumped on that OKR/"metrics" train and was hyped to have it. I was the only one against it, but that didn't make any difference. Two quarters later it was pretty obvious nobody gave a shit about those (we had much more important stuff to do) but our manager had to apologize to upper management quarterly for "poor performance" of our team. And informally, nobody was taking any of those OKRs seriously, and colleagues thought of it as a bad joke. I have no idea why the same team members didn't voice their opinion immediately and shot that idea down while it didn't take root yet. Now half of the company is getting laid off behind a thinly veiled excuse of a RTO (from a company which was remote first since the beginning, and much longer than covid years) and everyone is a surprised pikachu. I'm not saying this is solely because of the OKRs, there were more red flags besides that one. I'm actually surprised that very few saw it coming. That the CEO is trying to emulate Musk and do a Twitter speedrun, but with someone else's money. And blame engineers who actually made the company as known as it is.

by elric 3y ago

rightbyte 3y ago

Before Agile management didn't have a hammer to swing at you in the first place. Micromanagement required actual work. Agile has automated micromanagement for management ...

elric 3y ago
Hmm, you might have a point there. Still, it's just a hammer. It's blameless. I guess these management fads just make it easier for lousy managers to do damage?
- jq-r 3y ago
  Exactly. I would even say that hammer is a too nice of a word for what I would call a whip. Or even a rope. Lousy management gives you a rope which you can hang yourself with. That way they don't have to bother to get their hands dirty. For the life of me I couldn't really understand why 9 months ago when a new CEO came to our company and first thing he said "measure everything, every team should have public OKRs", everyone from my team jumped on that OKR/"metrics" train and was hyped to have it. I was the only one against it, but that didn't make any difference. Two quarters later it was pretty obvious nobody gave a shit about those (we had much more important stuff to do) but our manager had to apologize to upper management quarterly for "poor performance" of our team. And informally, nobody was taking any of those OKRs seriously, and colleagues thought of it as a bad joke. I have no idea why the same team members didn't voice their opinion immediately and shot that idea down while it didn't take root yet. Now half of the company is getting laid off behind a thinly veiled excuse of a RTO (from a company which was remote first since the beginning, and much longer than covid years) and everyone is a surprised pikachu. I'm not saying this is solely because of the OKRs, there were more red flags besides that one. I'm actually surprised that very few saw it coming. That the CEO is trying to emulate Musk and do a Twitter speedrun, but with someone else's money. And blame engineers who actually made the company as known as it is.