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How to Ensure Your Employees Don’t Care About Their Job, But Stick Around Anyway

14 points by bradleyjoyce 18y ago

swombat 18y ago
Somewhat incomplete article... what is he saying? that you shouldn't pay people well?
- randallsquared 18y ago
  I believe that he's saying you shouldn't pay people well enough that they'll stay even if they really dislike the work. Instead, find someone who's excited about the work,and then find out how much they want. There's a lot I don't know about business, but here's an idea I haven't heard of: pay people very little, but with immediate raises. I think the common wisdom is to avoid raises until you have revenue, but if you're going to spend, say, 60K/yr on someone and have funding for one year, you could structure the 60K in such a way as to provide 5 or 10 percent increases in paycheck for the entire year. Since people are happier about getting a raise than having any given amount, this might maximize payroll satisfaction.
  - arockwell 18y ago
    You'd have to start them off at a pretty low salary though (like 30k if my back of the envelope math-fu is good today). Would you take a job at a lower pay rate if they claimed to offer weekly raises? Seems like this would really shift too much power to your employer. What happens in year 2 on the job where its no longer possible to keep raising the pay on a regular basis?
    - gravitycop 18y ago
      I don't think the idea is to promise the pay raises. Where would the production-incentive be, if the employees thought they had earned the pay-raises up front?
      - randallsquared 18y ago
        Actually, my idea was to promise the pay increases. This assumes that knowing you're going to get them won't affect the joy of getting them very much. But that could be wrong. Also, the idea is not to prompt working harder because people actually think they're getting raises, but to make people you've already hired happier, on the assumption that happier people produce more/better.
        gravitycop 18y ago
        Actually, my idea was to promise the pay increases. OK. I stand corrected. What do you do if, halfway through the year, the corporate board tells you to cut spending? Do you keep your promise to the employees, and risk offending the board? I've had similar continuous-pay-increase ideas, myself, but I'm not sure about promising them up front. I like the idea of paying partly in equity, by the way. That way the employees are actually part of the company (co-owners), and they can genuinely feel they are building something that is theirs. Maybe the equity payments could be increased over time.
        randallsquared 18y ago
        "What do you do if, halfway through the year, the corporate board tells you to cut spending?" Whatever you would otherwise have done. If you have to lay people off, you lay people off. Since the yearly pay is known in advance, the only odd bit is the schedule of payments... if you have to lay someone off, you've actually spent less than you would have if all their paychecks are the same. But the details of all this aren't really the point -- I'm sure they could be worked out, if someone wanted to try it. I may if I hire employees at some point. Paying partly in equity seems nice, but it seems even less sustainable than distributing an employee's paycheck unevenly.
        gravitycop 18y ago
        Paying partly in equity seems nice, but it seems even less sustainable In a company that were not growing, it would indeed be unsustainable to pay in equity (unless the value fo the equity were continuously shrinking. But why would a startup company not be growing (valuation rising)? Unless it is a failure, isn't it normally growing?
- jwesley 18y ago
  I think he's saying that a cushy job can lead to a mediocre career. Once you get used to high pay, perks, and having it easy, it gets extremely hard to leave for a risky (but likely more rewarding) opportunity. That situation is the norm at many large corporations in highly regulated industries (government contract, aviation, etc). My first job was just like that, and I'm so glad I left.
smanek 18y ago
The problem for most information jobs is it's very hard to measure performance. Basically, I don't know how long a particular task should take, since every task is so different. It's very easy to notice when a guy on an assembly line is slacking. But, if Tom takes 3 months to complete a new feature/analysis and turns in reams of code/analysis, there's no easy way for me to tell if he was super-productive and finished 6 months of work in 3, or if he over engineered a solution and stretched a month's work into three. Even worse, Tom doesn't even know how productive he is. He'll think that whatever solution he ends up with is the best possible. Code reviews, pair programming, etc. all work to alleviate this information black hole. But they just end up stratifying information workers since, over time, workers will rise to better companies in accordance with their competence. And this will just worsen the information disparity. If most of your coworkers are at the same level of competence as you, no one will be able tell you how good you really are. Incidentally, based on anecdotal evidence, I believe this stratification will start at the bottom and work its way up. And that it is now about 25% complete. I've actually visited a company whose core business is sorting (mailing industry), where not a single employee had a reasonable understanding of Big-O notation, any standard sort algorithms, or any standard threading techniques. I've visited other companies (healthcare industry) that have over a million lines of VB6 (and they like it!) with no plans to transition for at least a decade. Another does most of its work on IBM Mainframes (VSE), and in spite of constantly running up against the limits of the platform, had never even heard of or investigated z/VM, LPARS, or Hipersockets (they thought I was making stuff up when I started to tell them about how all these features would make their lives easier). They scare away most decent programmers, and people who become decent run away. And, all the engineers at these places think they're great. Anyways, done ranting. I just finished interviewing around the country (eventually found a great company), and was really surprised by the fact that companies with dozens/hundreds of programmers apparently didn't have one good programmer.
- diN0bot 18y ago
  wow. stratification to this extent makes me think that a "good" programmer, one who has had the opportunity to learn even a little from programmers in reasonably high levels, will always be able to find a job, even if it's just a crap job with good pay at a company where one has to lead the raising of the status quo. do you think this is more or less true?
kenver 18y ago
Sometimes I find that after a few months working in the same job theres little left to learn which causes the boredom to set in. The problem is that you either settle into it and plug away, or move on to something new and challenging. If the pay and benefits are very good this counteracts the will you might have to leave, which I guess is what the company is trying to do. They don't want to lose the people who can do the job (perhaps even if you're coasting) so they pay you a salary/benefits to make you stay.
diN0bot 18y ago
It seems like an easy question of efficiency to me. Can passion scale to large corporations? I don't think so, though perhaps large complex systems can be abstracted into a hierarchy of simply modules. THe solution is not performance reviews, it's "small businesses". ('middle management' is just a stereotype from poor implementations of the hierarchy...i hope) from my own comment on the blog: Except that the talented people are going to the companies that give them good salaries and benefits and treat them with respect. The important thing for employers is to hire good people who respect the company and themselves, and thus do good work. The important thing for employees is to work for good companies that respect them, and thus provide decent responsibilities (job ownership) and power (salary, benefits).
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

14 points by bradleyjoyce 18y ago

swombat 18y ago

Somewhat incomplete article... what is he saying? that you shouldn't pay people well?

randallsquared 18y ago
I believe that he's saying you shouldn't pay people well enough that they'll stay even if they really dislike the work. Instead, find someone who's excited about the work,and then find out how much they want. There's a lot I don't know about business, but here's an idea I haven't heard of: pay people very little, but with immediate raises. I think the common wisdom is to avoid raises until you have revenue, but if you're going to spend, say, 60K/yr on someone and have funding for one year, you could structure the 60K in such a way as to provide 5 or 10 percent increases in paycheck for the entire year. Since people are happier about getting a raise than having any given amount, this might maximize payroll satisfaction.
- arockwell 18y ago
  You'd have to start them off at a pretty low salary though (like 30k if my back of the envelope math-fu is good today). Would you take a job at a lower pay rate if they claimed to offer weekly raises? Seems like this would really shift too much power to your employer. What happens in year 2 on the job where its no longer possible to keep raising the pay on a regular basis?
  - gravitycop 18y ago
    I don't think the idea is to promise the pay raises. Where would the production-incentive be, if the employees thought they had earned the pay-raises up front?
    - randallsquared 18y ago
      Actually, my idea was to promise the pay increases. This assumes that knowing you're going to get them won't affect the joy of getting them very much. But that could be wrong. Also, the idea is not to prompt working harder because people actually think they're getting raises, but to make people you've already hired happier, on the assumption that happier people produce more/better.
      - gravitycop 18y ago
        Actually, my idea was to promise the pay increases. OK. I stand corrected. What do you do if, halfway through the year, the corporate board tells you to cut spending? Do you keep your promise to the employees, and risk offending the board? I've had similar continuous-pay-increase ideas, myself, but I'm not sure about promising them up front. I like the idea of paying partly in equity, by the way. That way the employees are actually part of the company (co-owners), and they can genuinely feel they are building something that is theirs. Maybe the equity payments could be increased over time.
        randallsquared 18y ago
        "What do you do if, halfway through the year, the corporate board tells you to cut spending?" Whatever you would otherwise have done. If you have to lay people off, you lay people off. Since the yearly pay is known in advance, the only odd bit is the schedule of payments... if you have to lay someone off, you've actually spent less than you would have if all their paychecks are the same. But the details of all this aren't really the point -- I'm sure they could be worked out, if someone wanted to try it. I may if I hire employees at some point. Paying partly in equity seems nice, but it seems even less sustainable than distributing an employee's paycheck unevenly.
        gravitycop 18y ago
        Paying partly in equity seems nice, but it seems even less sustainable In a company that were not growing, it would indeed be unsustainable to pay in equity (unless the value fo the equity were continuously shrinking. But why would a startup company not be growing (valuation rising)? Unless it is a failure, isn't it normally growing?
jwesley 18y ago
I think he's saying that a cushy job can lead to a mediocre career. Once you get used to high pay, perks, and having it easy, it gets extremely hard to leave for a risky (but likely more rewarding) opportunity. That situation is the norm at many large corporations in highly regulated industries (government contract, aviation, etc). My first job was just like that, and I'm so glad I left.

smanek 18y ago

The problem for most information jobs is it's very hard to measure performance. Basically, I don't know how long a particular task should take, since every task is so different. It's very easy to notice when a guy on an assembly line is slacking. But, if Tom takes 3 months to complete a new feature/analysis and turns in reams of code/analysis, there's no easy way for me to tell if he was super-productive and finished 6 months of work in 3, or if he over engineered a solution and stretched a month's work into three. Even worse, Tom doesn't even know how productive he is. He'll think that whatever solution he ends up with is the best possible. Code reviews, pair programming, etc. all work to alleviate this information black hole. But they just end up stratifying information workers since, over time, workers will rise to better companies in accordance with their competence. And this will just worsen the information disparity. If most of your coworkers are at the same level of competence as you, no one will be able tell you how good you really are. Incidentally, based on anecdotal evidence, I believe this stratification will start at the bottom and work its way up. And that it is now about 25% complete. I've actually visited a company whose core business is sorting (mailing industry), where not a single employee had a reasonable understanding of Big-O notation, any standard sort algorithms, or any standard threading techniques. I've visited other companies (healthcare industry) that have over a million lines of VB6 (and they like it!) with no plans to transition for at least a decade. Another does most of its work on IBM Mainframes (VSE), and in spite of constantly running up against the limits of the platform, had never even heard of or investigated z/VM, LPARS, or Hipersockets (they thought I was making stuff up when I started to tell them about how all these features would make their lives easier). They scare away most decent programmers, and people who become decent run away. And, all the engineers at these places think they're great. Anyways, done ranting. I just finished interviewing around the country (eventually found a great company), and was really surprised by the fact that companies with dozens/hundreds of programmers apparently didn't have one good programmer.

diN0bot 18y ago
wow. stratification to this extent makes me think that a "good" programmer, one who has had the opportunity to learn even a little from programmers in reasonably high levels, will always be able to find a job, even if it's just a crap job with good pay at a company where one has to lead the raising of the status quo. do you think this is more or less true?

kenver 18y ago

Sometimes I find that after a few months working in the same job theres little left to learn which causes the boredom to set in. The problem is that you either settle into it and plug away, or move on to something new and challenging. If the pay and benefits are very good this counteracts the will you might have to leave, which I guess is what the company is trying to do. They don't want to lose the people who can do the job (perhaps even if you're coasting) so they pay you a salary/benefits to make you stay.

diN0bot 18y ago

It seems like an easy question of efficiency to me. Can passion scale to large corporations? I don't think so, though perhaps large complex systems can be abstracted into a hierarchy of simply modules. THe solution is not performance reviews, it's "small businesses". ('middle management' is just a stereotype from poor implementations of the hierarchy...i hope) from my own comment on the blog: Except that the talented people are going to the companies that give them good salaries and benefits and treat them with respect. The important thing for employers is to hire good people who respect the company and themselves, and thus do good work. The important thing for employees is to work for good companies that respect them, and thus provide decent responsibilities (job ownership) and power (salary, benefits).

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]