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Other signs for me personally: * Sales schedules dictate product development timelines rather than the other way around * Leadership thinks about practical op

Other signs for me personally: * Sales schedules dictate product development timelines rather than the other way around * Leadership thinks about practical operational/logistics issues only when forced to * The importance of "culture" is brought up without fail when talking about working from the office, and never at other times * Leadership is fond of setting goals and deathly allergic to providing incentives

iamthirsty 3y ago
I agree with all but the last, as I think it's debatable. > Leadership is fond of setting goals and deathly allergic to providing incentives Goals are good, in any way, as long as their portioned right. And at the level most people this is targeted to are working at, is the rather large salary supposed to be the incentive?
- mxkopy 3y ago
  It happens at lower levels too, when the company is too broke to give bonuses
- velcrovan 3y ago
  I'm talking about repeated, big pushes for extremely short-term departmental achievements that touch everyone including people with five-digit annual earnings.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  An incentive isn't an incentive if d/dx = 0 for behaviour x. Salary is how you get someone to work for you instead of a competitor, and keep them from spending their time worrying about mortgages, but it's not really an incentive unless someone is at risk of being fired. Performance bonuses, stock options, recognition, raises, promotions, and interesting projects are incentives.
polynomial 3y ago
What are some typical examples of operational/logistics issues that less than great management might otherwise ignore?
- velcrovan 3y ago
  Developing (and frequently revising) complicated schemes for things like pricing, discounts, and sales commissions (does the accounting system even track the data required to do these calculations? what would it take for it to do so, and how much training and effort to enter and clean the data... you know what who cares!) Not noticing the steady stream of accounting people traipsing to and from your IT manager's office to ask *accounting* questions, rather than ask the controller...and then when the IT manager brings it up, still refusing to notice it... They ask for a web-based configure-to-order tool, so you mock up a quick-and-dirty but very fake interactive demo as a discussion piece to get them to answer questions and make decisions about how the thing should work. When you show it to them and talk about what it will take to develop the real thing, baffled looks followed by “wait, isn't this the real thing? It’s working fine already!” I could go on...all stuff from past lives
_huayra_ 3y ago
> Leadership is fond of setting goals and deathly allergic to providing incentives. This hits me hard now. I was considering whether I should hit the gas at work trying to meet some completely unrealistic metrics, only to be in a conference call where some guy from another team basically did the same (missing a lot of events with his family), only to get a bunch of those stupid animated emoji things in Teams as his only compensation (I asked him offline if he got any bonus from it). I'm leaving work early to hit the ski slopes tomorrow. Life is too short to be rewarded by digital clapping hands and hearts.
askvictor 3y ago
Depending on the stage a company is at or its cashflow, #1 can sometimes be acceptable. It's a balancing act; if you haven't got money to pay developers, you haven't got development.

iamthirsty 3y ago

I agree with all but the last, as I think it's debatable. > Leadership is fond of setting goals and deathly allergic to providing incentives Goals are good, in any way, as long as their portioned right. And at the level most people this is targeted to are working at, is the rather large salary supposed to be the incentive?

mxkopy 3y ago
It happens at lower levels too, when the company is too broke to give bonuses
velcrovan 3y ago
I'm talking about repeated, big pushes for extremely short-term departmental achievements that touch everyone including people with five-digit annual earnings.
mitthrowaway2 3y ago
An incentive isn't an incentive if d/dx = 0 for behaviour x. Salary is how you get someone to work for you instead of a competitor, and keep them from spending their time worrying about mortgages, but it's not really an incentive unless someone is at risk of being fired. Performance bonuses, stock options, recognition, raises, promotions, and interesting projects are incentives.

polynomial 3y ago

What are some typical examples of operational/logistics issues that less than great management might otherwise ignore?

velcrovan 3y ago
Developing (and frequently revising) complicated schemes for things like pricing, discounts, and sales commissions (does the accounting system even track the data required to do these calculations? what would it take for it to do so, and how much training and effort to enter and clean the data... you know what who cares!) Not noticing the steady stream of accounting people traipsing to and from your IT manager's office to ask *accounting* questions, rather than ask the controller...and then when the IT manager brings it up, still refusing to notice it... They ask for a web-based configure-to-order tool, so you mock up a quick-and-dirty but very fake interactive demo as a discussion piece to get them to answer questions and make decisions about how the thing should work. When you show it to them and talk about what it will take to develop the real thing, baffled looks followed by “wait, isn't this the real thing? It’s working fine already!” I could go on...all stuff from past lives

_huayra_ 3y ago

> Leadership is fond of setting goals and deathly allergic to providing incentives. This hits me hard now. I was considering whether I should hit the gas at work trying to meet some completely unrealistic metrics, only to be in a conference call where some guy from another team basically did the same (missing a lot of events with his family), only to get a bunch of those stupid animated emoji things in Teams as his only compensation (I asked him offline if he got any bonus from it). I'm leaving work early to hit the ski slopes tomorrow. Life is too short to be rewarded by digital clapping hands and hearts.

askvictor 3y ago

Depending on the stage a company is at or its cashflow, #1 can sometimes be acceptable. It's a balancing act; if you haven't got money to pay developers, you haven't got development.