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> I know that if you go back far enough in these posts of mine, you will find some real crap in there. Sometimes that's because I had a position on something th

by d--b 2y ago

> I know that if you go back far enough in these posts of mine, you will find some real crap in there. Sometimes that's because I had a position on something that turned out to not be very useful, or in some cases, actively harmful. This sucks, but that's life: you encounter new information and you are given the opportunity to change your mind, and then sometimes you actually do exactly that. followed by > So, my new position on that sort of thing is: fuck them I always found rachel's articles (is she called rachel? Idk) way too opinionated. It doesn't get better with experience apparently. I mean, don't "fuck them"... Maybe, just maybe, there's some tool out there in the blue void of ideas, that could potentially help managers UNDERSTAND what's going on. I, for instance. As an individual contributor, I will accept everything that is thrown at me. Yet, there are specific tasks I totally suck at, and I will slack a lot to avoid doing them. I don't like going to my manager and tell them: "I actually suck at this, and if you give this task that sounds relatively easy to anyone else, I will slack the shit past the deadline for sure." So if there was a may that my manager could learn this by himself. That would certainly help everyone on the team. I am not very proud of that particular aspect of my psychology, but you know, that's the way it is. I'm highly capable in other aspects, so I don't think my employment is questionable in any way. There is just this specific psychological thing that maybe a tool could help fixing.

KaiserPro 2y ago
I like that Rachel has clearly expressed opinions. What I love is that Rachel is aware of them, revisits, and explains why a new opinion has been formed. being able to say "I was wrong, because" followed by "here is my new opinion based on what I have learnt" is much more valuable than opinion disguised as fact. Knowing _why_ an opinion has changes is often very valuable. > Maybe, just maybe, there's some tool out there in the blue void of ideas, that could potentially help managers UNDERSTAND what's going on. Maybe, but what the article points out is that slapping a metric on something and saying "this is performance" leaves you with a massive quantisation error. If you have a simplistic metric, then people will optimise for it, often simplistically. The other thing the article points out is that "peer feedback" is often not a useful way to help people. If you were to put your point about those specific tasks in your own feedback, or someone wrote it about you, it would form an indelible mark on your record. Because it'll probably be the only tangible and actionable bit of information, you manager will overindex on that.
- dambi0 2y ago
  I agree. It is always commendable to face the realisation that our previously held actions or opinions are limited. Even more so to do so publicly with the hope the experience can help someone else. On the other hand, we are told that these previous actions were actively harmful. Perhaps given this some degree of apology to those that might have been impacted would be in order. The final sentence of the article is quite illuminating. I wonder whether that would have changed were the metrics useful in identifying relative work performance. It's a courageous and commendable article either way.

by d--b 2y ago

KaiserPro 2y ago

I like that Rachel has clearly expressed opinions. What I love is that Rachel is aware of them, revisits, and explains why a new opinion has been formed. being able to say "I was wrong, because" followed by "here is my new opinion based on what I have learnt" is much more valuable than opinion disguised as fact. Knowing _why_ an opinion has changes is often very valuable. > Maybe, just maybe, there's some tool out there in the blue void of ideas, that could potentially help managers UNDERSTAND what's going on. Maybe, but what the article points out is that slapping a metric on something and saying "this is performance" leaves you with a massive quantisation error. If you have a simplistic metric, then people will optimise for it, often simplistically. The other thing the article points out is that "peer feedback" is often not a useful way to help people. If you were to put your point about those specific tasks in your own feedback, or someone wrote it about you, it would form an indelible mark on your record. Because it'll probably be the only tangible and actionable bit of information, you manager will overindex on that.

dambi0 2y ago
I agree. It is always commendable to face the realisation that our previously held actions or opinions are limited. Even more so to do so publicly with the hope the experience can help someone else. On the other hand, we are told that these previous actions were actively harmful. Perhaps given this some degree of apology to those that might have been impacted would be in order. The final sentence of the article is quite illuminating. I wonder whether that would have changed were the metrics useful in identifying relative work performance. It's a courageous and commendable article either way.