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>>the manager is not politely savvy enough to ensure their team is being recognized for work that grows or is valuable to the business. Actually in most compan

by kamaal 11mo ago

>>the manager is not politely savvy enough to ensure their team is being recognized for work that grows or is valuable to the business. Actually in most companies, no ones watching whats happening, no ones watching who performs, who slacks, or anything for that matter. Companies are basically a kind of a loosely assembled random crowd, where no one cares a thing about anything. In this kind of a set up both hardwork and laziness go unnoticed, which is why a persistent level of mediocrity is all pervasive. People do the bare minimum needed to keep lights on. Getting rewards, or not getting punished in this kind of set up, largely depends on who you know, how they view you and what they are willing to do for you.

anal_reactor 11mo ago
The problem is that as you go further up in hierarchy, people by definition have less specialized, and more general knowledge. This means that there are things that lower-level employee understands but their manager doesn't. This in turn means that it's impossible for the manager to tell whether the employee is doing a good or a bad job because the manager simply doesn't understand the details of the job. This is open door for slackers and low-performers, because from certain perspectives, they're indistinguishable from hard workers. I used to be a hard-working high-performer, but then I understood that because of numerous management problems that are beyond my control, the reward is very loosely correlated with my efforts, and given an existing job contract, the best way to maximize the reward/effort ratio is not to put more effort hoping for disproportionately higher rewards, but to put significantly less effort because the reward will drop just slightly. Do you want to up your hourly salary 5 times? Simply take 5 times as much time to deliver same feature. You might not get the 0.05x salary bump but that doesn't actually impact the calculation that much.
- tasuki 11mo ago
  Cynical! (and probably true too) I work for a small company (~10 people), solving reasonably interesting problems, earn peanuts, and am happier than I was at big tech.
  - anal_reactor 11mo ago
    If I get kicked out from big tech I might search for such a place, but for the time being, I am in a position where I get paid to do nothing, it's literally free money. My plan A is to keep doing same nothing until retirement (about 15 years). Plan B is not to have plan B and just look at the job market when I need to switch, because it's utterly unpredictable long-term.
- mancerayder 11mo ago
  An intelligent manager with generalized expertise can be smart enough to figure out intuitively the performance of their directs in a specialized area they have less knowledge in. In fact I would argue it's a must for a tech manager, and it shows in the form of a mix of Socratic questioning, knowing when to step in and get out of the way, and stopping to deep dive if necessary without micromanaging. For a good manager, I think micromanaging is a punishment or a temporary condition. A bad tech manager a) thinks he/she must know more than their directs (no organization would ever scale if the leader in the hierarchy above knew all of what was below), b) micromanages competent people instead of giving them high level directives and course correcting at a high level when necessary c) can't tell the difference between the high performers and the slackers. In my experience, there's a slew of bad managers out there, and in my present reality the bad ones are highly technical people who should not be managing human beings or projects.
mlrtime 11mo ago
Sorry you've only worked in places like that. There are places where very smart people doing work that nobody in the company can do and they are well aware and rewarded for it.
- azemetre 11mo ago
  Those workers can be counted on two hands at most for 99.99% of public companies. What about the vast majority of workers that are doing the grudge work that keeps the company afloat? Do they not deserve a say in the direction of the company? Do workers not deserve democracy in the work place to decide their own fates? Why should this be left of to centralized communist dictatorships (boards + executives)?
iwishiknewlisp 11mo ago
[dead]

by kamaal 11mo ago

anal_reactor 11mo ago

The problem is that as you go further up in hierarchy, people by definition have less specialized, and more general knowledge. This means that there are things that lower-level employee understands but their manager doesn't. This in turn means that it's impossible for the manager to tell whether the employee is doing a good or a bad job because the manager simply doesn't understand the details of the job. This is open door for slackers and low-performers, because from certain perspectives, they're indistinguishable from hard workers. I used to be a hard-working high-performer, but then I understood that because of numerous management problems that are beyond my control, the reward is very loosely correlated with my efforts, and given an existing job contract, the best way to maximize the reward/effort ratio is not to put more effort hoping for disproportionately higher rewards, but to put significantly less effort because the reward will drop just slightly. Do you want to up your hourly salary 5 times? Simply take 5 times as much time to deliver same feature. You might not get the 0.05x salary bump but that doesn't actually impact the calculation that much.

tasuki 11mo ago
Cynical! (and probably true too) I work for a small company (~10 people), solving reasonably interesting problems, earn peanuts, and am happier than I was at big tech.
- anal_reactor 11mo ago
  If I get kicked out from big tech I might search for such a place, but for the time being, I am in a position where I get paid to do nothing, it's literally free money. My plan A is to keep doing same nothing until retirement (about 15 years). Plan B is not to have plan B and just look at the job market when I need to switch, because it's utterly unpredictable long-term.
mancerayder 11mo ago
An intelligent manager with generalized expertise can be smart enough to figure out intuitively the performance of their directs in a specialized area they have less knowledge in. In fact I would argue it's a must for a tech manager, and it shows in the form of a mix of Socratic questioning, knowing when to step in and get out of the way, and stopping to deep dive if necessary without micromanaging. For a good manager, I think micromanaging is a punishment or a temporary condition. A bad tech manager a) thinks he/she must know more than their directs (no organization would ever scale if the leader in the hierarchy above knew all of what was below), b) micromanages competent people instead of giving them high level directives and course correcting at a high level when necessary c) can't tell the difference between the high performers and the slackers. In my experience, there's a slew of bad managers out there, and in my present reality the bad ones are highly technical people who should not be managing human beings or projects.

mlrtime 11mo ago

Sorry you've only worked in places like that. There are places where very smart people doing work that nobody in the company can do and they are well aware and rewarded for it.

azemetre 11mo ago
Those workers can be counted on two hands at most for 99.99% of public companies. What about the vast majority of workers that are doing the grudge work that keeps the company afloat? Do they not deserve a say in the direction of the company? Do workers not deserve democracy in the work place to decide their own fates? Why should this be left of to centralized communist dictatorships (boards + executives)?

iwishiknewlisp 11mo ago

[dead]