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To summarize the idea in a work concept for those who won't read through - East Coast "kind" would be to tell the person working for you about their performanc

To summarize the idea in a work concept for those who won't read through - East Coast "kind" would be to tell the person working for you about their performance issues early, in a constructive feedback manner such that they could course correct or find a role they are better suited for. The hope is they either improve in the role, find a new role internally, or decide to move on before having to stomach a firing. West Coast nice would be to let the person working for you continue to perform poorly without feedback, being "nice" to them, but privately considering them incompetent. Eventually you will end up firing them without much warning when a cut actually has to be made. Think Amazon PIP.

lotsofpulp 2y ago
>Eventually you will end up firing them without much warning when a cut actually has to be made. Think Amazon PIP. I would bet managers on the east coast keep under performers around just to have people to cut also, doesn’t take a genius to figure out the strategy. You invest in people you think can improve and help you, you get rid of the ones that hurt you, and you keep the so so ones for when you need to sacrifice.
- steveBK123 2y ago
  Most companies don't run an Amazon style PIP program where you HAVE to cut X% annually on every team. Therefore, keeping around people who genuinely deserve firing is a drag on delivering. As a result it is always in your interest to get improvements out of your team members, whether by upskilling, role changing, hoping they leave on their own or worst case actually laying them off. I've worked in financial service tech for nearly 20 years across 6 companies and only 1 I would say did a "5% every year" thing, and even that got paused for years at a time when market conditions pushed that way. Even if your statement is true, it is a matter of framing. Obviously you keep your best staff, and fire the actively negatively contributing staff. The people in the middle aren't just "for when you need to sacrifice".. they are simply the middle 50%. You obviously want to see them improve as well.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    >Most companies don't run an Amazon style PIP program where you HAVE to cut X% annually on every team. I cannot comment on pervasiveness, but I thought the "fire bottom x%" (or stack ranking or yank and rank) strategy started on the east coast, with businesses like GE, hence it would not be a trait isolated to either coast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve >The people in the middle aren't just "for when you need to sacrifice".. they are simply the middle 50%. You obviously want to see them improve as well. Everyone wants to see everyone improve, but time and energy are a scarce resource, so it is just a matter of how much you want to bet on each person.
    - derefr 2y ago
      It's still not most companies. But it's maybe the top N public companies — the ones that are all "headless" in corporate-vision terms, and so hire the same few management consultancies to tell them what to do. Ignoring those few largest companies and focusing on the other 99% of businesses that don't hire management consultancies, this is definitely a "thing" with businesses on the west coast.
      - sklargh 2y ago
        Just want to correct something here. Management consultancies are *rarely* hired for expertise. They're functionally a form of career insurance for senior leadership's proposals and an internal political tool to allow unpalatable or political challenging things to be executed.
        derefr 2y ago
        Yes, management consultancies are not hired because anyone expects them to know what they're doing. But they are hired for a certain specific kind of "expertise" they uniquely possess — that being the internal knowledge about management decisions being made in other companies (perhaps with their guidance; or perhaps just with them there at the time to witness those decisions.) In other words, management consultancies can tell you how to "copy the success" of companies you personally think are worth copying, provided the management consultancy you hire has records of their consultants working at that company. (You won't actually be "copying their success", because you'll be applying your mental schema of what would make for success to deciding which of their internal practices and decisions should be copied. So it's more a "cargo-culting of success." But executives still want that!) A CEO won't trust the thinking of a fresh 20-year-old sent over by Bain. But they will trust the thinking of a CEO they admire. And they're willing to pay big bucks just for Bain to send them the 20-year-old rather than Bain's best, not only because the 20-year-old is a political tool; but also because the 20-year-old is a channel through which the CEO can tap into Bain's institutional memory of private leadership meetings held by their most-admired CEOs! (And this creates an active transmission vector for the spread of business-management-theory memes. "Return To Office"? It may have started because a few bigcorps like Apple had big albatross investments of commercial real-estate in the form of massive HQ buildings. But it spread throughout the Fortune 500 via their shared reliance on the management-consultancy grapevine.) Management consultancies know that this is half the reason companies hire them — or at least the consultants who've been around the block know this. And this is why there's any place at all for senior management consultants, rather than it being strictly a "get in, make your money, retire early" sort of job. It's not that the senior consultants know more about business. It's that their field experience has enabled them to internalize and distill the current corporate zeitgeist — and so they can just tell you off the top of their heads what you should be doing to be the management-theory equivalent of "fashionable." (And this doesn't look outwardly any different than the "best practices" advice the 20-year-old will give you based on what they learned in their MBA program. So there's plausible deniability in this, in a way there isn't in asking the 20-year-old to dredge up records from your competitors.)
iancmceachern 2y ago
My wife and I refer to the latter as "Smile F'ing"
- steveBK123 2y ago
  I became familiar with this term in the mid 2000s and took it to be a Britishism, though I may have been wrong on its origin. Usually it was used in the context of some devious ladder climbing political hack manager in corporate that we'd refer to as a "smile f'er" as he (always he) would be smiling while he secretly f'd you.
swaggyBoatswain 2y ago
I am from Florida, where there is a lot of southern hosptiality and east coast “kind”. We tend to be a bit more aggressive in our language and openly expressive but it tends to come from one of empathy and support. We tend to understand and communicate well, small talk is easy and normalized. People also will greet you even if you are a stranger, its really nice Going to the west coast - it is weird. People arent genuinely empathetic or rather, its a foreign concept to them. Empathy is always done through some indirect means, through hobbies for instance. I do feel people on the west coast and midwest arent really used to community collaboration either near as much as the east coast either. Also they are not used to openly expressing themselves, I suspect this has to do with fear of being negatively judged I also just went to LA. It is such a foreign concept to me how black and white everything is. A lot of people will believe there are truly evil or good people - its such a weird thing for me to hear coming from the east coast - we just think of people as like people. I think at least on the west coast, alot of this artificial niceness has to do with rising CoL, asian influence, and homeless problems Mid west is more so like less exposure to international culture compared to east coast Conformity is like rewarded a lot more in the midwest and west coast, people imo struggle to be individualistic and most resort to some sort of pseudonym to express themselves I do feel people on the east coast are just in general, simpler people used to simpler things and overall just happier people I have some friends that moved from seattle, they do tend to express themselves better in text then verbally
- codelikeawolf 2y ago
  I think you nailed it. However, as someone that grew up in the midwest, then spent 5 years living on the west coast, I would say that lumping the midwest in with the west coast for this statement is wildly inaccurate: > I do feel people on the west coast and midwest arent really used to community collaboration either near as much as the east coast either. Also they are not used to openly expressing themselves... If you spend some time in Chicago, I think you would find that it isn't much different from the east coast, based on your description. I can assure you that we have no issues openly expressing ourselves :)
  - swaggyBoatswain 2y ago

lotsofpulp 2y ago

>Eventually you will end up firing them without much warning when a cut actually has to be made. Think Amazon PIP. I would bet managers on the east coast keep under performers around just to have people to cut also, doesn’t take a genius to figure out the strategy. You invest in people you think can improve and help you, you get rid of the ones that hurt you, and you keep the so so ones for when you need to sacrifice.

steveBK123 2y ago
Most companies don't run an Amazon style PIP program where you HAVE to cut X% annually on every team. Therefore, keeping around people who genuinely deserve firing is a drag on delivering. As a result it is always in your interest to get improvements out of your team members, whether by upskilling, role changing, hoping they leave on their own or worst case actually laying them off. I've worked in financial service tech for nearly 20 years across 6 companies and only 1 I would say did a "5% every year" thing, and even that got paused for years at a time when market conditions pushed that way. Even if your statement is true, it is a matter of framing. Obviously you keep your best staff, and fire the actively negatively contributing staff. The people in the middle aren't just "for when you need to sacrifice".. they are simply the middle 50%. You obviously want to see them improve as well.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  >Most companies don't run an Amazon style PIP program where you HAVE to cut X% annually on every team. I cannot comment on pervasiveness, but I thought the "fire bottom x%" (or stack ranking or yank and rank) strategy started on the east coast, with businesses like GE, hence it would not be a trait isolated to either coast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve >The people in the middle aren't just "for when you need to sacrifice".. they are simply the middle 50%. You obviously want to see them improve as well. Everyone wants to see everyone improve, but time and energy are a scarce resource, so it is just a matter of how much you want to bet on each person.
  - derefr 2y ago
    It's still not most companies. But it's maybe the top N public companies — the ones that are all "headless" in corporate-vision terms, and so hire the same few management consultancies to tell them what to do. Ignoring those few largest companies and focusing on the other 99% of businesses that don't hire management consultancies, this is definitely a "thing" with businesses on the west coast.
    - sklargh 2y ago
      Just want to correct something here. Management consultancies are *rarely* hired for expertise. They're functionally a form of career insurance for senior leadership's proposals and an internal political tool to allow unpalatable or political challenging things to be executed.
      - derefr 2y ago
        Yes, management consultancies are not hired because anyone expects them to know what they're doing. But they are hired for a certain specific kind of "expertise" they uniquely possess — that being the internal knowledge about management decisions being made in other companies (perhaps with their guidance; or perhaps just with them there at the time to witness those decisions.) In other words, management consultancies can tell you how to "copy the success" of companies you personally think are worth copying, provided the management consultancy you hire has records of their consultants working at that company. (You won't actually be "copying their success", because you'll be applying your mental schema of what would make for success to deciding which of their internal practices and decisions should be copied. So it's more a "cargo-culting of success." But executives still want that!) A CEO won't trust the thinking of a fresh 20-year-old sent over by Bain. But they will trust the thinking of a CEO they admire. And they're willing to pay big bucks just for Bain to send them the 20-year-old rather than Bain's best, not only because the 20-year-old is a political tool; but also because the 20-year-old is a channel through which the CEO can tap into Bain's institutional memory of private leadership meetings held by their most-admired CEOs! (And this creates an active transmission vector for the spread of business-management-theory memes. "Return To Office"? It may have started because a few bigcorps like Apple had big albatross investments of commercial real-estate in the form of massive HQ buildings. But it spread throughout the Fortune 500 via their shared reliance on the management-consultancy grapevine.) Management consultancies know that this is half the reason companies hire them — or at least the consultants who've been around the block know this. And this is why there's any place at all for senior management consultants, rather than it being strictly a "get in, make your money, retire early" sort of job. It's not that the senior consultants know more about business. It's that their field experience has enabled them to internalize and distill the current corporate zeitgeist — and so they can just tell you off the top of their heads what you should be doing to be the management-theory equivalent of "fashionable." (And this doesn't look outwardly any different than the "best practices" advice the 20-year-old will give you based on what they learned in their MBA program. So there's plausible deniability in this, in a way there isn't in asking the 20-year-old to dredge up records from your competitors.)

iancmceachern 2y ago

My wife and I refer to the latter as "Smile F'ing"

steveBK123 2y ago
I became familiar with this term in the mid 2000s and took it to be a Britishism, though I may have been wrong on its origin. Usually it was used in the context of some devious ladder climbing political hack manager in corporate that we'd refer to as a "smile f'er" as he (always he) would be smiling while he secretly f'd you.

swaggyBoatswain 2y ago

I am from Florida, where there is a lot of southern hosptiality and east coast “kind”. We tend to be a bit more aggressive in our language and openly expressive but it tends to come from one of empathy and support. We tend to understand and communicate well, small talk is easy and normalized. People also will greet you even if you are a stranger, its really nice Going to the west coast - it is weird. People arent genuinely empathetic or rather, its a foreign concept to them. Empathy is always done through some indirect means, through hobbies for instance. I do feel people on the west coast and midwest arent really used to community collaboration either near as much as the east coast either. Also they are not used to openly expressing themselves, I suspect this has to do with fear of being negatively judged I also just went to LA. It is such a foreign concept to me how black and white everything is. A lot of people will believe there are truly evil or good people - its such a weird thing for me to hear coming from the east coast - we just think of people as like people. I think at least on the west coast, alot of this artificial niceness has to do with rising CoL, asian influence, and homeless problems Mid west is more so like less exposure to international culture compared to east coast Conformity is like rewarded a lot more in the midwest and west coast, people imo struggle to be individualistic and most resort to some sort of pseudonym to express themselves I do feel people on the east coast are just in general, simpler people used to simpler things and overall just happier people I have some friends that moved from seattle, they do tend to express themselves better in text then verbally

codelikeawolf 2y ago
I think you nailed it. However, as someone that grew up in the midwest, then spent 5 years living on the west coast, I would say that lumping the midwest in with the west coast for this statement is wildly inaccurate: > I do feel people on the west coast and midwest arent really used to community collaboration either near as much as the east coast either. Also they are not used to openly expressing themselves... If you spend some time in Chicago, I think you would find that it isn't much different from the east coast, based on your description. I can assure you that we have no issues openly expressing ourselves :)
- swaggyBoatswain 2y ago