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The way they used to handle that at a FAANG I worked for was they had this app installed on each machine issued by IT, that would ask you a question daily about

The way they used to handle that at a FAANG I worked for was they had this app installed on each machine issued by IT, that would ask you a question daily about some aspect of your workplace. Handles all the phishing concerns, except that participation was either low or the feedback was negative, which would lead to the leaders issuing subtle threats to the team about how they'd find out the involved folks and fire them. If you tried to uninstall it, it'd be back in a few hours through policy management software (jamf and its ilk). On the internal discussion forums, they'd nuke threads talking about how to disable that software. So, in the end, people just started giving the best possible feedback regardless of the team or manager performance. I never really needed those threads, all I needed was tcpdump and then blocking its domain in the hosts file :)

estimator7292 1y ago
That sounds absolutely horrifying
- bsjaux628 1y ago
  The behavior is Org and department specific. What happens is that those questions are map to a 'Org Health' metric (satisfaction, innovation, etc) and they are Manager aggregated, so your Manager's manager saw those report and your Director saw your skip manager's and so on. I would say my org was very healthy in terms of handling it, no treaths or anything, just asking us what we thought was going wrong, how to improve and coming up every year with a new SOP to do the connection's review. Again, YMMV.
gusgus01 1y ago
Somehow this and the parent both represent Amazon. Daily questions and a yearly survey that security had to assure us was legit.
eru 1y ago
> So, in the end, people just started giving the best possible feedback regardless of the team or manager performance. That seems to be the best possible strategy for any feedback you have to give as a captive audience? Reminds me of the feedback German companies are forced to give about their employees. It's like a formal letter of reference, but you can and will be sued if you you anything negative. Consequences are as you would expect. And because there has been an inflation in how complimentary these letters are, people started suing when their letter wasn't flowery enough, because that somehow could be read as an implicit criticism. (Just like how A is a bad mark, when everyone else gets A+.)
- supriyo-biswas 1y ago
  > That seems to be the best possible strategy for any feedback you have to give as a captive audience? It is, but at that point why even have that bureaucratic process that achieves exactly nothing? Of course, I understand that being able to pat yourself on the back and concluding with statements like "Leadership is truly connected with its employees, keeping in touch every day through questions about improving the workplace. Our surveys show 99% of our employees are very satisfied with their team, their work, and work-life balance" is "valuable", I guess, I just feel very sad about humanity.
  - serial_dev 1y ago
    > why even have that bureaucratic process that achieves exactly nothing? It is a very good question that you should never bring up as captive audience.
    - baq 1y ago
      If you have a back channel in the audience you should get a large enough group to ask this question in the free form feedback box in the exactly same wording. Should send chills down the lord of HR spine. Don’t do it with a group which isn’t large enough though, you’ll get you all fired for unionizing^W no reason.
      - eru 1y ago
        Again, there's no incentive to do this. It's full of downsides, and the only upside is some lolz from trolling.
        baq 1y ago
        It all depends on what your utility function is, but for most people I completely agree. For a good example of such activism not blowing up completely in your face would be the OpenAI revolt and sama reinstatement, but that’s obviously survivorship bias.
        1y ago
dlenski 1y ago
> The way they used to handle that at a FAANG I worked for was they had this app installed on each machine issued by IT, that would ask you a question daily about some aspect of your workplace. I presume you're referring to "Amazon Connections"? Had to be the most-hated bit of corporate enforcedware around. Every Linux laptop user had a different hack for hobbling or removing it.
- scubbo 1y ago
  It's been years, and I still remember the infamous ticket `CONNECTIONS-3303`. A pox on everyone involved with that clusterfuck.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

estimator7292 1y ago

That sounds absolutely horrifying

bsjaux628 1y ago
The behavior is Org and department specific. What happens is that those questions are map to a 'Org Health' metric (satisfaction, innovation, etc) and they are Manager aggregated, so your Manager's manager saw those report and your Director saw your skip manager's and so on. I would say my org was very healthy in terms of handling it, no treaths or anything, just asking us what we thought was going wrong, how to improve and coming up every year with a new SOP to do the connection's review. Again, YMMV.

gusgus01 1y ago

Somehow this and the parent both represent Amazon. Daily questions and a yearly survey that security had to assure us was legit.

eru 1y ago

> So, in the end, people just started giving the best possible feedback regardless of the team or manager performance. That seems to be the best possible strategy for any feedback you have to give as a captive audience? Reminds me of the feedback German companies are forced to give about their employees. It's like a formal letter of reference, but you can and will be sued if you you anything negative. Consequences are as you would expect. And because there has been an inflation in how complimentary these letters are, people started suing when their letter wasn't flowery enough, because that somehow could be read as an implicit criticism. (Just like how A is a bad mark, when everyone else gets A+.)

supriyo-biswas 1y ago
> That seems to be the best possible strategy for any feedback you have to give as a captive audience? It is, but at that point why even have that bureaucratic process that achieves exactly nothing? Of course, I understand that being able to pat yourself on the back and concluding with statements like "Leadership is truly connected with its employees, keeping in touch every day through questions about improving the workplace. Our surveys show 99% of our employees are very satisfied with their team, their work, and work-life balance" is "valuable", I guess, I just feel very sad about humanity.
- serial_dev 1y ago
  > why even have that bureaucratic process that achieves exactly nothing? It is a very good question that you should never bring up as captive audience.
  - baq 1y ago
    If you have a back channel in the audience you should get a large enough group to ask this question in the free form feedback box in the exactly same wording. Should send chills down the lord of HR spine. Don’t do it with a group which isn’t large enough though, you’ll get you all fired for unionizing^W no reason.
    - eru 1y ago
      Again, there's no incentive to do this. It's full of downsides, and the only upside is some lolz from trolling.
      - baq 1y ago
        It all depends on what your utility function is, but for most people I completely agree. For a good example of such activism not blowing up completely in your face would be the OpenAI revolt and sama reinstatement, but that’s obviously survivorship bias.
      - 1y ago

dlenski 1y ago

> The way they used to handle that at a FAANG I worked for was they had this app installed on each machine issued by IT, that would ask you a question daily about some aspect of your workplace. I presume you're referring to "Amazon Connections"? Had to be the most-hated bit of corporate enforcedware around. Every Linux laptop user had a different hack for hobbling or removing it.

scubbo 1y ago
It's been years, and I still remember the infamous ticket `CONNECTIONS-3303`. A pox on everyone involved with that clusterfuck.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]