3 ms·

> (1) lack of effort or (2) lack of organization. (3) lack of reward I say the former 2 is caused by 3. Why would anyone put in over-time to solve a problem,

by chii 3y ago

> (1) lack of effort or (2) lack of organization. (3) lack of reward I say the former 2 is caused by 3. Why would anyone put in over-time to solve a problem, if they dont know how well they'd get rewarded by it? It's why small/founder owned startups get more done with less, because they know themselves how much reward they'd get when putting in the hard yards.

iSnow 3y ago
Small groups of like-minded people (from the same cultural and social background) move faster because they have less friction and a shared mission statement. That is something that translates badly to bigger groups, no matter the reward. Us tech guys already get rewarded with great working conditions and good pay.
- jraph 3y ago
  > already get rewarded with great working conditions and good pay In addition to those, having clues that my work is appreciated (by colleagues / customers / users) plays a big role as well.
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    Making an effort in general (in all things: dressing well, speaking well, working hard) is almost completely a social activity. If there's nobody to impress, it's 10x harder to motivate myself. You end up having to imagine a hypothetical future person that your effort would impress, which is much less convincing to the lizard brain.
tharkun__ 3y ago
Your parent never mentions overtime. Personally I agree with his assessment and none of it requires overtime. Lack of effort literally means people that show the level of effort your reply seems to suggest you are putting in. A normal level of effort, not just doing exactly as much as you need not to get fired is generally enough to stand out and have good results (output and pay wise). No overtime required. A good level of organization helps in that regard because you aren't wasting any of the effort you are making. It cuts out the overtime by itself.
- a_imho 3y ago
  Hard disagree, bruteforcing work for rewards is waaay sub optimal in the vast majority of cases. Most people are better off interviewing, job hopping and always-be-leaving and/or social engineering their careers. Note, I'm talking about competent people who can hold a job. Any unit of effort put in over not-getting-fired is almost 100% wasted (financial) reward wise.
  - pi-e-sigma 3y ago
    Exactly. It's much, much easier to get promoted if you brown-nose or schmooze with your boss. If anything, being the hardest working man in a team is a sure way to not get a promotion because you are too valuable as a work-horse
  - tharkun__ 3y ago
    We may have very different ideas about all this. And different experiences and expectations of life. I'm not sure what "bruteforcing" means here. I definitely had people on my team that were of the "just-enough-not-to-get-fired" variety. In most places they would not have been fired - agree. But they worked for me and I expect you to actually be doing your job and not just kissing up to the boss. I don't expect you to do overtime and I will protect you and the rest of the team from said overtime BS. I'm really really allergic to unrealistic BS "deadlines" and I'm super extra allergic to deadlines that get set because someone else did not do their job properly (like a PM not planning properly and such). The general "pretend to be busy for 60h a week" culture is something I despise. Put in a regular 40h (or if that's your place 35h, 37.5h etc.) of work but I don't want to "see" you be on Facebook (or HN for that matter) on work time. And you have to actually display competence when we have a technical conversation. There are so many people being passed off as intermediate to senior level that just do the bare minimum not to get fired that are perpetual juniors with 20 years of experience. The worst guy was actually one of those and he really thought he could weasel his way out of actually doing work with the typical "I ran into issue X and Y and Z and it took forever to solve them" dance. For things that literally take 5 minutes to solve for someone that is not just pretending. Provably. So yeah, not with me. Go work for someone else. And yes, I got to this place by - horror, shock - actually doing good work. I've gotten 20% raises without asking for them by just doing a regular 40h week doing my normal work.
thrdbndndn 3y ago
This is very true, but not sure how to solve it. For a job where the "reward" (mainly salary) is fronted and somewhat fixed (no bonus or bonus isn't worth it), some (even most) people basically work as little as possible to not get themselves fired. But it would also be challenging to change the rewarding structure to something similar to salesman.
- chii 3y ago
  > challenging to change the rewarding structure to something similar to salesman. profit sharing. This happens at the executive level, because it correctly aligns the incentives. But somehow, the run of the mill employee cannot be trusted to think for themselves and be incentivized?
  - pi-e-sigma 3y ago
    Profit sharing works at every level, just the people at the top don't want to give a cut to those below them. So it's pure greed.
Lutger 3y ago
2 and 3 are often intertwined. A lack of proper reward sometimes is exactly what lack of organization means or results in. I've worked at many different jobs, the really dysfunctional ones tend to punish rather than reward good work. Also, be careful with the overtime. A really well organized company is able to pay its employees for every hour that they work. They also don't need overtime to make up for dysfunctional planning. Overtime is, after all, a lack of reward by definition. That is, I'm assuming unpaid overtime of course. Its not always like this, though in my experience the really messy organizations put a lot of value on overtime, either because there was a crisis all the time or it was the 'look me being busy (with my career)' kind of politicised org.
bagels 3y ago
Am in a startup, finding the low expectation around getting funding is affecting my attitude towards 1 and 2.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> Why would anyone put in over-time to solve a problem, if they dont know how well they'd get rewarded by it? Because they enjoy it. Because they want to create cool stuff. Intrinsic motivation! Maybe they have to turn it into some kind of business in order to sustain it. Sometimes things have huge operational costs and people are unable to maintain their existence without making money. The ideal of creation for its own sake remains though.
nickd2001 3y ago
Obligatory "Office Space" quote: ;) Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. Bob Porter: Don't... don't care? Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation?
dasil003 3y ago
Small teams get more done with less because communication overhead is low and agency is high in each individual. Big teams tend to struggle because people don’t know exactly what to do to move the whole shambling enterprise forward. It’s less about effort and more about coordination. Aside from the specific IC skills present, some understanding of the social dynamics and systemic outcomes of the teams ways of working needs to be sprinkled throughout the team to keep things on track. People tend to want to draw a box around their role so they have clarity in their work, but problems don’t conform to these boundaries, and often the hardest thing is framing challenges in the right way so that the team can make progress and avoid devolving into finger pointing or learned helplessness. Forget rewards for a second, just recognizing small actions and statements that have huge net negative impact on a team can be surprisingly difficult at scale.
hirvi74 3y ago
> Why would anyone put in over-time to solve a problem, if they dont know how well they'd get rewarded by it? Fear of punishment i.e., getting fired. That's why I do it most of the time. I know for a fact I won't get rewarded for it.

by chii 3y ago

iSnow 3y ago

Small groups of like-minded people (from the same cultural and social background) move faster because they have less friction and a shared mission statement. That is something that translates badly to bigger groups, no matter the reward. Us tech guys already get rewarded with great working conditions and good pay.

jraph 3y ago
> already get rewarded with great working conditions and good pay In addition to those, having clues that my work is appreciated (by colleagues / customers / users) plays a big role as well.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Making an effort in general (in all things: dressing well, speaking well, working hard) is almost completely a social activity. If there's nobody to impress, it's 10x harder to motivate myself. You end up having to imagine a hypothetical future person that your effort would impress, which is much less convincing to the lizard brain.

tharkun__ 3y ago

Your parent never mentions overtime. Personally I agree with his assessment and none of it requires overtime. Lack of effort literally means people that show the level of effort your reply seems to suggest you are putting in. A normal level of effort, not just doing exactly as much as you need not to get fired is generally enough to stand out and have good results (output and pay wise). No overtime required. A good level of organization helps in that regard because you aren't wasting any of the effort you are making. It cuts out the overtime by itself.

a_imho 3y ago
Hard disagree, bruteforcing work for rewards is waaay sub optimal in the vast majority of cases. Most people are better off interviewing, job hopping and always-be-leaving and/or social engineering their careers. Note, I'm talking about competent people who can hold a job. Any unit of effort put in over not-getting-fired is almost 100% wasted (financial) reward wise.
- pi-e-sigma 3y ago
  Exactly. It's much, much easier to get promoted if you brown-nose or schmooze with your boss. If anything, being the hardest working man in a team is a sure way to not get a promotion because you are too valuable as a work-horse
- tharkun__ 3y ago
  We may have very different ideas about all this. And different experiences and expectations of life. I'm not sure what "bruteforcing" means here. I definitely had people on my team that were of the "just-enough-not-to-get-fired" variety. In most places they would not have been fired - agree. But they worked for me and I expect you to actually be doing your job and not just kissing up to the boss. I don't expect you to do overtime and I will protect you and the rest of the team from said overtime BS. I'm really really allergic to unrealistic BS "deadlines" and I'm super extra allergic to deadlines that get set because someone else did not do their job properly (like a PM not planning properly and such). The general "pretend to be busy for 60h a week" culture is something I despise. Put in a regular 40h (or if that's your place 35h, 37.5h etc.) of work but I don't want to "see" you be on Facebook (or HN for that matter) on work time. And you have to actually display competence when we have a technical conversation. There are so many people being passed off as intermediate to senior level that just do the bare minimum not to get fired that are perpetual juniors with 20 years of experience. The worst guy was actually one of those and he really thought he could weasel his way out of actually doing work with the typical "I ran into issue X and Y and Z and it took forever to solve them" dance. For things that literally take 5 minutes to solve for someone that is not just pretending. Provably. So yeah, not with me. Go work for someone else. And yes, I got to this place by - horror, shock - actually doing good work. I've gotten 20% raises without asking for them by just doing a regular 40h week doing my normal work.

thrdbndndn 3y ago

This is very true, but not sure how to solve it. For a job where the "reward" (mainly salary) is fronted and somewhat fixed (no bonus or bonus isn't worth it), some (even most) people basically work as little as possible to not get themselves fired. But it would also be challenging to change the rewarding structure to something similar to salesman.

chii 3y ago
> challenging to change the rewarding structure to something similar to salesman. profit sharing. This happens at the executive level, because it correctly aligns the incentives. But somehow, the run of the mill employee cannot be trusted to think for themselves and be incentivized?
- pi-e-sigma 3y ago
  Profit sharing works at every level, just the people at the top don't want to give a cut to those below them. So it's pure greed.

Lutger 3y ago

2 and 3 are often intertwined. A lack of proper reward sometimes is exactly what lack of organization means or results in. I've worked at many different jobs, the really dysfunctional ones tend to punish rather than reward good work. Also, be careful with the overtime. A really well organized company is able to pay its employees for every hour that they work. They also don't need overtime to make up for dysfunctional planning. Overtime is, after all, a lack of reward by definition. That is, I'm assuming unpaid overtime of course. Its not always like this, though in my experience the really messy organizations put a lot of value on overtime, either because there was a crisis all the time or it was the 'look me being busy (with my career)' kind of politicised org.

bagels 3y ago

Am in a startup, finding the low expectation around getting funding is affecting my attitude towards 1 and 2.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> Why would anyone put in over-time to solve a problem, if they dont know how well they'd get rewarded by it? Because they enjoy it. Because they want to create cool stuff. Intrinsic motivation! Maybe they have to turn it into some kind of business in order to sustain it. Sometimes things have huge operational costs and people are unable to maintain their existence without making money. The ideal of creation for its own sake remains though.

nickd2001 3y ago

Obligatory "Office Space" quote: ;) Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. Bob Porter: Don't... don't care? Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation?

dasil003 3y ago

Small teams get more done with less because communication overhead is low and agency is high in each individual. Big teams tend to struggle because people don’t know exactly what to do to move the whole shambling enterprise forward. It’s less about effort and more about coordination. Aside from the specific IC skills present, some understanding of the social dynamics and systemic outcomes of the teams ways of working needs to be sprinkled throughout the team to keep things on track. People tend to want to draw a box around their role so they have clarity in their work, but problems don’t conform to these boundaries, and often the hardest thing is framing challenges in the right way so that the team can make progress and avoid devolving into finger pointing or learned helplessness. Forget rewards for a second, just recognizing small actions and statements that have huge net negative impact on a team can be surprisingly difficult at scale.

hirvi74 3y ago

> Why would anyone put in over-time to solve a problem, if they dont know how well they'd get rewarded by it? Fear of punishment i.e., getting fired. That's why I do it most of the time. I know for a fact I won't get rewarded for it.