7 ms·
Managing High Performers
- makerdiety 2y agoManaging high performers? Step one: pay them what they're worth. With the reliable incompetence of the average job, we shouldn't ever expect this kind of rational fair compensation. Really, we should be seeing truly talented people making an exodus away from what is called a socially appropriate job. Due to there being a gross monopoly, right now, on economic resources (led by the dictatorship of midwits).
- atoav 2y agoThat article advocates for paying them what they are worth, even if it exceeds the salary of higher-ups.
- Viliam1234 2y agoFound the person who actually read the article before commenting.
- makerdiety 2y agoIf you have failed to infer a discovery of the global trend of complete withdrawal from traditional economic institutions, employment, and sources of income due to the stubborn impracticality of jobs rationally compensating very skilled men for their natural potential, then it is certain that you have scientific ability that hovers around a basic level. You would then steadily indicate that you are heavily prone to the fallacy fallacy, such as caring about irrelevant and distracting memes like the No True Scotsman fallacy, for example.
- wslh 2y ago> Managing high performers? Step one: pay them what they're worth. Don't forget that no all companies can pay what they're worth... most companies don't.
- swatcoder 2y agoMany high performing people receive great compensation, at least in financially flush fields like technology, and maximizing compensation isn't everyone's game. In fact, I'd say that high performers are often less distracted by that than most. What keeps a sufficiently paid high performer around, usually, is a personally rewarding and comfortable work environment. What that means can vary quite a lot though, making it hard to summarize in blogspam and short comments.
- cvadict 2y agoAgree 1000%. I'd take less pay to not have to deal with some middle-management dimwit who read this article trying to actively "coach" me.
- phil21 2y agoYeah, I don't understand these sort of hot takes in the articles like it. As said middle-management dimwit, isn't sort of the definition of a high performer is that they perform without much coaching? That doesn't mean lack of management as the article implies - it means setting them up for success. Set them on a task, give them a few constraints as needed, and act as a bulldozer to remove blockers as they come to you with them. That's roughly the management a high performer needs in my book. Make sure you listen to them when they complain about something, and fix it within reason. Or explain why you cannot. Don't let penny wise pound foolish stuff fester. Advocate for merit based raises and bonuses - they are making you look good so they should be your first priority when expending political capital. Make sure higher ups and the rest of the org knows about their accomplishments. Simple stuff!
- packetlost 2y agoI'll second this. Most of the top performers I know, at any given time, could probably double their salary if they really wanted to. I know I could almost certainly by moving from a nimble smaller company that treats me with respect and responsibility (and a lot of fun problems) to one of the big tech companies.
- tsunamifury 2y agoThey will never do that. Gaslit high performers are the profit delta of any team.
- whaaaaat 2y agoI am not aware of any role in tech (or really anywhere in wage labor) where people are being paid what they are worth. Nearly every job that exists gets paid a whole lot less than they make for the company, sometimes millions less per year. So I'd say, pay us all what we are worth, and pay the high performers proportionally more.
- aorloff 2y agoThe market disagrees
- whaaaaat 2y agoIndeed. Thankfully, the market is not the only way of organizing people.
- thrw42A8N 2y agoThe market is the only way of organizing people, thankfully it doesn't mean much. (Even non-profits etc are part of the market)
- dasil003 2y agoThe market is not an organization, the market is a disorganization—except in the case of a monopoly/monopsony, in which case intervention is desirable.
- thrw42A8N 2y agoNobody said that the market is some organization, it's a way of organizing people, and it happens naturally. It's not something you invent, create and maintain, it's something you discover and observe - and try to control, often in vain or with unintended consequences, like weather. There was a market long before anybody thought of the word - and it was one of the first words. The oldest known written text is not some religious fluff or descriptions of market-less utopia, it's a "warranty claim" about a shipment of copper.
- mwkaufma 2y ago"they just float around and help people" heaven forbid
- palata 2y agoThat's a huge risk for the company: if you let them do that for long enough, they may help other employees become high performers as well! /s
- herval 2y agoSarcasm aside, this can actually lead to situations where most people just rely on the “savior” and don’t grow to the level they should. Very common problem, and you only realize it after the high performers leaves
- phillipcarter 2y agoThis is the correct take. Another way I like to think of this is you actually really just have a bus factor of 1 spread across the whole org if you need the high performing savior to step in and actually get things done.
- Salgat 2y agoThis is one case where I agree, and I'd even argue that a person who acts as "the savior" in this fashion is not as high a performer as they would seem, since they're introducing a negative productivity multiplier to their coworkers. The best advice you can ever give to a high productivity person is to create a barrier of resistance to helping others. When someone comes to me for help, I always ask what they've tried and let them work through the solution, because if I do it myself, they'll never learn and in the future my productivity will suffer since I have to spend more time helping them on things a junior or mid-level should be capable of doing.
- takemetoearth 2y agoI can tell you've never been reprimanded for being a blocker, when management sides with the people asking ridiculous learned helplessness questions, instead of learning how to help themselves. Bully for you, but just be aware that not everyone works for people this understanding.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 2y agoTheres generally no room for "high performance" in large corporations like Amazon and Google. There is room for getting work done quickly and to spec, but that's different than high output creative problem solving. The value in many businesses is that they have compartmentalized employees into high output replaceable cogs. High performing employees outside of startups and "innovation teams" are a risk to a business
- stogot 2y agoHave you ever worked in faang? I disagree
- whatshisface 2y agoAny company with bigger than three people will end up with compartments that have different internal cultures.
- tsunamifury 2y agoI worked there much longer than you and 100% agree. Most people here just confuse high output with actual high performers. Google no longer is able to place high performers because the current elite class of execs either see them as a threat or narrative disruptors. Likely you never climbed high enough to see this.
- krtlandt 2y agoIt can even be seen from the outside if you observe the actual output of high ranking Googlers in open source projects and compare that with their status at Google. Some are just nasty politicians that produce neither quality nor quantity.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 2y agoPeople lower down on the ranks never realize that this is going on. They also have no exposure to what people are like higher up, and how much of it is bullshit politics
- 2y ago
- jawns 2y agoI managed a person who was more senior than I was, and definitely a top performer. What did they want me to do? Get stuff out of their way, so they could move as fast as they were capable of moving. I was happy to do that, and we had a great relationship.
- herval 2y agoThat’s great when what they want to do is aligned with what the organization needs. It’s essentially not-managing. The issue is, many times high performers just aren’t aligned with what needs doing, and by not-managing them, inexperienced managers create a world where you have tons of “high performance” arriving absolutely nowhere. You see this at every bloated organization (in particular at big tech).
- wjnc 2y agoI’ve got a high performer on my team and I do think (okay, wouldn’t I ;) that in managing speed vs quality and explicit attention to the learning curve of others I’ve managed to create a few more golden nuggets. No high performer (perhaps: nobody, ever) has all professional skills in the same measure.
- atoav 2y agoOne thing that is not in the article is the fact that high performing people are often asked to do things that aren't part of their job description and for which there is no time in their timetable. As someone who is currently in that role I expect my managers to know where the limits lie and defend them against other higher ups, departments etc. And that means there should never be a long period of over-straining these resources.
- whstl 2y agoThis is where I see most people burning out and leaving. At my company we recently had three product managers leaving because they were forced to do someone else's job.
- erikerikson 2y agoSome good advice here but contains (paraphrasing) "Always ask them for more". Why not help them find and keep balance? We get to be excellent because we care and want to do the work well. Always mindlessly pushing for more is advocating for burning out your best people. Yes we want to grow but sometimes we need rest and further, that rest and proper balance is key to getting the best results.
- __loam 2y agoMost companies are happy to keep taking without additional compensation.
- erikerikson 2y agoOf course, and if you ask for too much you get less.
- tsunamifury 2y agoActual high performers cannot be managed as they eventually will question why a less capable person is managing them. This is the basic unsolvable quandary everyone ignored at Google during my 10 years there. What these silly advice columns actually are selling is “how to drain over producers until you can discard them”
- derektank 2y agoI guess it depends on what you mean by less capable. I've had great managers that had pretty negligible technical skills but they were able to provide me with good direction and made sure that I wasn't wasting my time on work that didn't matter. And on the flip side I've had bosses that were way better at my job than I was but they were not at all fun to work for, for a variety of reasons.
- whstl 2y agoSame. Some of my best managers weren't really as technical as I was, or were experts in completely different domains. The job of a manager isn't being a "better developer", it's to remove blockers and isolate reports from annoyances, so that they can do their best work.
- takemetoearth 2y agoThis won't go over well here, but: we might have to dismantle a lot of the economy if we want to fix draining overproducers until you can discard them...
- levocardia 2y agoThis is a silly idea. Managing is a different skill than performing (at any task). Usain Bolt's coach was not a very fast sprinter. LeBron James' coach at Miami was merely a middling basketball player.
- tsunamifury 2y agoStop using sports it’s a poor metaphor and by all account's all coaches are high performing formers players themselves. This is kitchen table economics talk.
- giantg2 2y agoI'm convinced real coaching doesn't exist. I don't think I've ever had real coaching. I've even requested additional coaching as a medical accommodation. It's just additional low quality feedback. There's no focus on growth or improvement. I have no doubt that I'm not living up to my potential. I don't see any way to get there given my disability and lack of real coaching.
- __loam 2y agoI've noticed this too. If you want to get better, you're basically responsible for doing it in your own time. Using work time for unproductive learning seems frowned on and punished.
- giantg2 2y agoWho defines what "better" is?
- takemetoearth 2y agoWhoever has the power to fire you.
- giantg2 2y agoSo it's always changing
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- soulofmischief 2y agoThat's annoying. What do you feel you're struggling with? What's your disability?
- giantg2 2y agoBasically, politics. ASD.
- newsclues 2y agoUnderstand what they value as an individual: compensation, work life balance or interesting work can all be valued by top talent and it often depends where they are in life.
- krtlandt 2y agoThe article assumes that managers of software high performers have the same quality as Tiger Wood's coach. Nothing is further from the truth. In general, I feel that the article is geared towards making the high performer work harder and ignoring his often legitimate complaints. It does not address the question why high performers sometimes get irritable. The reasons can range from people intriguing against them with lies to being underappreciated. "Cutting off the oxygen" is a one-sided and primitive measure.
- Izkata 2y ago> and ignoring his often legitimate complaints. It does not address the question why high performers sometimes get irritable. The reasons can range from people intriguing against them with lies to being underappreciated. This one stuck out at me too. We now have "architect" roles, and one of them was assigned to our group, having never even looked at our legacy codebases before, and during a meeting my response to what he wanted was pretty close to what's in this post - "that doesn't make sense / isn't a good idea". I didn't have a good on-the-spot explanation at that moment, it came from years of experience working with this legacy system, that I had to later figure out how to summarize all of that and put that intuition into words.
- robg 2y agoEven the best performers need structure and guidance - a coach. Without coaching, high performers can meet all sorts of suboptimal fates… Why don’t tech companies generally employ coaches? Yes you can get an “executive” coach, but not widely and really depends on the culture for the perceived purpose. Coaches aren’t widely available for helping people using (and not abusing) their brain’s gifts every day.
- Viliam1234 2y agoProbably some kind of worry "but what if we spend our money coaching them... and then they leave?" The same reason tech companies generally don't spend money training their employees, etc.
- mempko 2y agoThe two important things a manager needs to do with high performers is simply make sure nothing stands in their way and make sure they are paid well. My experience with high performers is they will ask for guidance when they need it. You don't need to offer it to them.
- takemetoearth 2y agoBut first, we have to argue about our own individual interpretations of what a "high performer is", and then justify our belief that it is every single one of us, because-
- jurschreuder 2y agoI don't need any managing I want the rest of the team to also be high performers and low performers go work in another team
- EPWN3D 2y agoFrom my own experience as a high performer: don't bullshit them, and be upfront when you are parroting required HR talking points. Worse than anything else in TFA is insulting my intelligence, especially when it comes to career advancement. That's why I left a job I'd been at for quite a long time. The company suddenly decided to gamble that I didn't know the difference between inflation and core inflation.
- binary132 2y agoWho’s managing these managers and management article writers is what I want to know
- pan69 2y agoSomehow these articles always come across to me as; managers are perfect and those who need to be managed are flawed.