5 ms·

there's a scene from the tv show "suits" that has always stuck with me: the show is set in a law firm, and in this particular episode they needed to lay off so

by zem 2y ago

there's a scene from the tv show "suits" that has always stuck with me: the show is set in a law firm, and in this particular episode they needed to lay off some of their associates. a young, newly-promoted lawyer was tasked with drawing up a list of the associates and marking the ones who she felt should get the axe, based on their performance. so she comes up with some metrics, goes through the associates' work, and ranks them based on the resultant numbers, saying that the bottom few could be let go. there is one employee, brian, who ends up near the bottom of the list. a more senior person takes her aside and asks why she recommended brian be laid off, so she brings out the metrics and rankings and points to him near the bottom. the senior person asks "okay, so who are the top associates in your list? can you point them out on the seating chart?". turns out, the top five associates were all brian's neighbours, and the reason was that he was really good at helping people when they were stuck with something. but of course that affected his own individual contributor numbers, and there were no metrics for "helped someone else out but didn't get credit for it".

Shatnerz 2y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if that was directly adapted from the anecdotes of Harry Nyquist at Bell Labs [1]. """ After crunching a lot of data, they found that the only thing the productive employees had in common (other than having made it through the Bell Labs hiring process) was that "Workers with the most patents often shared lunch or breakfast with a Bell Labs electrical engineer named Harry Nyquist. It wasn't the case that Nyquist gave them specific ideas. Rather, as one scientist recalled, 'he drew people out, got them thinking'" (p. 135). """ 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Nyquist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Nyquist
- ryukoposting 2y ago
  The cynic in me expects someone to read this and come to the conclusion that what they really need is more data to improve their review process. Clearly we need to know who's eating lunch together!
  - blitzar 2y ago
    The cynic in me expects poor performers / low contributers who read this come to the conclusion that they are the Harry Nyquist of their organisation.
    - gffrd 2y ago
      The cynic in me expects people to read this thread and pat themselves on the back for definitely _not_ a being Harry Nyquist OR a poor performer / low contributor!
- blub 2y ago
  This by the way is an excellent argument against home office for professions where innovation plays an important role. I don’t think we’ll ever see a Wikipedia quote saying “the only thing productive employees had in common is that they were hanging out in a Microsuck Teams chat room”.
  - vdvsvwvwvwvwv 2y ago
    Not entirely convinced. The tradeoff is in-office you need to sit next to someone. Remote you can talk to anyone in the world. But it is the role of good WFH culture to avoid siloing of people.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Except you don’t actually talk (as in have a real conversation) with anyone on Teams.
      - danaris 2y ago
        Maybe you don't. I've never had any trouble having real conversations on online platforms, whether for work or otherwise.
        lazide 2y ago
        Research shows, that is about as accurate as saying a Twinkie is real food. Not completely wrong, but…
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        danaris 2y ago
        [Citation needed]? I've not heard of any research that shows that it's impossible to have meaningful conversations on these platforms. And please note the distinction between "it is impossible to have such conversations" and "some people (especially less tech-savvy people) have a harder time having such conversations" on these platforms. Teams/Slack/Discord/etc is just another communication medium. Once our society has, collectively, had more of a chance to get used to them, and once we're no longer dealing with an entire generation who were bad managers before the personal computer even existed (</hyperbole>), I wager you'll see a lot less complaining about the medium itself.
- hinkley 2y ago
  I have been accused by a number of people who like me of “asking good questions” and of asking difficult questions by people who don’t. I sucked at school until someone opened up the idea for me around third grade that how the curriculum is taught is just the teacher’s opinion, not a law, or a religion. If you can reframe the material in a way that makes sense to you then do so. I ended up spot-tutoring a bunch of people over the years because I would hear them complain about how the material made no sense and I would swoop in and say, “yeah how they teach this is bullshit, have you tried thinking about it this way?” Which validates their frustration and then gives them a life raft. That kind of reframing to keep up can become reframing to get ahead. I went from Problem Student to grade school “valedictorian”, to polymath. Years ago we were all fixated on the trap of Expert Beginner and I would half-joke that I was instead an Expert Journeyman - able to quickly get to adequate instead of mediocre in a new discipline. And these days I think that may be what “polymath” is most of the time. Just knowing what the next question is to ask to keep going. The big breakthroughs come from people who become experts in most fields, but these same sorts of people also get pretty good at music or painting or writing as a hobby. As good or better than mediocre professionals. The first time this happened to me in a professional setting, a coworker was stuck on a SQL problem and insisted I pair with them to help debug it. I told her I’ve never touched SQL, just worked on some bespoke data processing. She didn’t care. Come here anyway. And I’ll be damned if I didn’t help her find her problem by just asking her what this part does and that part does. Why does this work that way? And I started writing SQL a couple weeks later, substantially off of just that interaction, bolstered by what first generation search engines could scrape together. And the thing is when everyone asks you questions and you don’t break their trust, you quickly learn where all the bodies are buried in the project/org. Which is a valuable asset for someone wishing to become a lead or staff engineer. I became lead by popular vote most times, rather than an actual game plan to get promoted. I just did what thought needed to get done and was within my abilities, which looks a lot like leadership, especially if management doesn’t have that quality. Port in a storm, that’s me. But I’ve never ever completed the most stories or features. I’ve occasionally fixed the most bugs, the most performance issues, or workflow problems. Is calculated I saved forty man hours a week for the team on code-build-test-push ergonomics and my shitheel boss was still made about my productivity those two quarters. I could not show up to work and still be contributing 8 hours a day, dummy.
throwaway2037 2y ago
I have posted a few times here about this issue. Honestly, you need to protect yourself first. If your line manager is anything less than amazing and very involved, then helping your teammates "too much" is an easy way to miss promotions and pay rises due to lower year-end ratings.
CSMastermind 2y ago
As someone who has both built and used different off the shelf tracking tools I've always found that they were terrible for evaluating individuals but great for evaluating teams (and by proxy the manager).
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 2y ago
> there were no metrics for "helped someone else out but didn't get credit for it" Employees should be evaluated, by their peers, their managers, and their subordinates. Wherever possible, the evaluations should be qualitative rather than quantitative. Trying to automate performance evaluations and boil your employees' contributions down to numbers in a report is both idiotic and inhuman. Everyone knows the terrible team members, and everyone knows the outstanding team members. If you need information to inform layoffs, promotions, or raises, the best way to get the information is to just ask.

by zem 2y ago

Shatnerz 2y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if that was directly adapted from the anecdotes of Harry Nyquist at Bell Labs [1]. """ After crunching a lot of data, they found that the only thing the productive employees had in common (other than having made it through the Bell Labs hiring process) was that "Workers with the most patents often shared lunch or breakfast with a Bell Labs electrical engineer named Harry Nyquist. It wasn't the case that Nyquist gave them specific ideas. Rather, as one scientist recalled, 'he drew people out, got them thinking'" (p. 135). """ 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Nyquist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Nyquist

ryukoposting 2y ago
The cynic in me expects someone to read this and come to the conclusion that what they really need is more data to improve their review process. Clearly we need to know who's eating lunch together!
- blitzar 2y ago
  The cynic in me expects poor performers / low contributers who read this come to the conclusion that they are the Harry Nyquist of their organisation.
  - gffrd 2y ago
    The cynic in me expects people to read this thread and pat themselves on the back for definitely _not_ a being Harry Nyquist OR a poor performer / low contributor!
blub 2y ago
This by the way is an excellent argument against home office for professions where innovation plays an important role. I don’t think we’ll ever see a Wikipedia quote saying “the only thing productive employees had in common is that they were hanging out in a Microsuck Teams chat room”.
- vdvsvwvwvwvwv 2y ago
  Not entirely convinced. The tradeoff is in-office you need to sit next to someone. Remote you can talk to anyone in the world. But it is the role of good WFH culture to avoid siloing of people.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Except you don’t actually talk (as in have a real conversation) with anyone on Teams.
    - danaris 2y ago
      Maybe you don't. I've never had any trouble having real conversations on online platforms, whether for work or otherwise.
      - lazide 2y ago
        Research shows, that is about as accurate as saying a Twinkie is real food. Not completely wrong, but…
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        danaris 2y ago
        [Citation needed]? I've not heard of any research that shows that it's impossible to have meaningful conversations on these platforms. And please note the distinction between "it is impossible to have such conversations" and "some people (especially less tech-savvy people) have a harder time having such conversations" on these platforms. Teams/Slack/Discord/etc is just another communication medium. Once our society has, collectively, had more of a chance to get used to them, and once we're no longer dealing with an entire generation who were bad managers before the personal computer even existed (</hyperbole>), I wager you'll see a lot less complaining about the medium itself.
hinkley 2y ago
I have been accused by a number of people who like me of “asking good questions” and of asking difficult questions by people who don’t. I sucked at school until someone opened up the idea for me around third grade that how the curriculum is taught is just the teacher’s opinion, not a law, or a religion. If you can reframe the material in a way that makes sense to you then do so. I ended up spot-tutoring a bunch of people over the years because I would hear them complain about how the material made no sense and I would swoop in and say, “yeah how they teach this is bullshit, have you tried thinking about it this way?” Which validates their frustration and then gives them a life raft. That kind of reframing to keep up can become reframing to get ahead. I went from Problem Student to grade school “valedictorian”, to polymath. Years ago we were all fixated on the trap of Expert Beginner and I would half-joke that I was instead an Expert Journeyman - able to quickly get to adequate instead of mediocre in a new discipline. And these days I think that may be what “polymath” is most of the time. Just knowing what the next question is to ask to keep going. The big breakthroughs come from people who become experts in most fields, but these same sorts of people also get pretty good at music or painting or writing as a hobby. As good or better than mediocre professionals. The first time this happened to me in a professional setting, a coworker was stuck on a SQL problem and insisted I pair with them to help debug it. I told her I’ve never touched SQL, just worked on some bespoke data processing. She didn’t care. Come here anyway. And I’ll be damned if I didn’t help her find her problem by just asking her what this part does and that part does. Why does this work that way? And I started writing SQL a couple weeks later, substantially off of just that interaction, bolstered by what first generation search engines could scrape together. And the thing is when everyone asks you questions and you don’t break their trust, you quickly learn where all the bodies are buried in the project/org. Which is a valuable asset for someone wishing to become a lead or staff engineer. I became lead by popular vote most times, rather than an actual game plan to get promoted. I just did what thought needed to get done and was within my abilities, which looks a lot like leadership, especially if management doesn’t have that quality. Port in a storm, that’s me. But I’ve never ever completed the most stories or features. I’ve occasionally fixed the most bugs, the most performance issues, or workflow problems. Is calculated I saved forty man hours a week for the team on code-build-test-push ergonomics and my shitheel boss was still made about my productivity those two quarters. I could not show up to work and still be contributing 8 hours a day, dummy.

throwaway2037 2y ago

I have posted a few times here about this issue. Honestly, you need to protect yourself first. If your line manager is anything less than amazing and very involved, then helping your teammates "too much" is an easy way to miss promotions and pay rises due to lower year-end ratings.

CSMastermind 2y ago

As someone who has both built and used different off the shelf tracking tools I've always found that they were terrible for evaluating individuals but great for evaluating teams (and by proxy the manager).

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 2y ago

> there were no metrics for "helped someone else out but didn't get credit for it" Employees should be evaluated, by their peers, their managers, and their subordinates. Wherever possible, the evaluations should be qualitative rather than quantitative. Trying to automate performance evaluations and boil your employees' contributions down to numbers in a report is both idiotic and inhuman. Everyone knows the terrible team members, and everyone knows the outstanding team members. If you need information to inform layoffs, promotions, or raises, the best way to get the information is to just ask.