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There's a lot of jeering, I suspect at the headline more than anything, but having documented research can be helpful in changing management behavior. The chang

There's a lot of jeering, I suspect at the headline more than anything, but having documented research can be helpful in changing management behavior. The changes in employee behavior documented here are not ones that managers would easily connect to their past behavior, such as a late birthday recognition. When you train a dog, you have to give a reward very soon after the desired behavior, otherwise the dog won't associate the reward with the behavior. Likewise, a manager is not going to associate a slight towards an employee with an increase in absenteeism or lower productivity that happens days and weeks later.

mejutoco 9mo ago
> When you train a dog, you have to give a reward very soon after the desired behavior, otherwise the dog won't associate the reward with the behavior Regarding dog training, one can use a placeholder for the reward. This is useful, for example, if you want to reward a dolphin jumping through a hula, because you will not be able to give the reward at that moment, but for example, you can say "yes!" or use a clicker at that moment, and give the reward later, and it will be clear what caused it. For anyone training any animal, I recommend the book: Don't Shoot the Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training by Karen Pryor (not affiliated in any way)
- pinnochio 9mo ago
  I suppose the employee-getting-revenge-on-manager equivalent would be playing some loud, annoying sound immediately after the slight, and then engaging in absenteeism and cutting work early later on.
  - njhnjhnjh 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - pinnochio 9mo ago
      I mean, that works too. Unless the resulting concussion, brain damage, or death means they don't make the association with their slight.
- tarkin2 9mo ago
  Have we got to the point where we need an article telling us that slighting people doesn't help their motivation? Perhaps the answer is yes when we also compare a worker's motivation to a dog's motivation seemingly without irony.
  - pinnochio 9mo ago
    Having a documented effect and effect size puts this in terms that can change manager behavior, even a somewhat callous one, because they can see how it affects their own professional goals. Btw, the comparison was between the dog and manager, and about the association of cause and effect. Maybe you should try to read more carefully and charitably in the future.
    - tarkin2 9mo ago
      Well, to many it seemed that an obvious cause-and-effect fact that should have come from empathy and introspection--that workers are just like you and I don't like being slighted--and didn't need to be written about. Yet when of the top comments used dog training to explain manager-worker relations--something that empathy and introspection could tell you was a bit off (would you feel slighted if I make our interactions analogous to an owner and dog?)--it may show, yes, such does need to be spelt out these days. I recall the University of Manchester was teaching university students empathy.
      - pinnochio 9mo ago
        Again, the comparison was between a dog and a manager. There's zero insinuation that a manager is like an owner and an employee like a dog. It does feel like you're looking for a pretext to feel slighted here. That aside, I completely agree with you that managers should engage in empathy and introspection. I still think it's helpful, even for those that do, to have some empirical confirmation of how strongly employees can be affected by what might seem a simple oversight to an otherwise empathetic and introspective manager. But unfortunately, callous people tend to be chosen for management, and this research is also potentially helpful in aligning their own self-interest with their employees.
njhnjhnjh 9mo ago
[flagged]
- pinnochio 9mo ago
  Indeed. I've had a few of those. I also had a couple that were really good.
  - _alternator_ 9mo ago
    Dogs or managers?
    - pinnochio 9mo ago
      Yep.
- educasean 9mo ago
  Perhaps it may help to work on your social skills with more intent. People who often find themselves disrespected at work aren't always bad performers but they do tend to have large social blind spots they themselves aren't aware of.
  - watwut 9mo ago
    Or maybe, quite a few managers need to work on their social skills. It is genuinely weird that the expectation of emotional and social management always falls on engineer in these debates. Maybe, just maybe, a manager with supposedly higher social skills should be able to manage relationships with engineers better.
  - benj111 9mo ago
    Why do you jump to the conclusion of parent being the problem? Your comment implicitly accepts that people's social skills can be problematic, but you assume it isn't the manager?
    - 9mo ago
alephnerd 9mo ago
A lot of this is already known. If I find out that management is being adversarial to ICs (eg. not offering to pay 75th percentile salaries, giving crap equity offers) I've put pressure to let heads roll. Similarly, if I've seen ICs become adversarial (eg. quiet quitting, overemployed, ignoring brutally honest conversations to upskill, constantly undermining product roadmaps) I've often allowed heads to roll as well. At least in the Bay Area, the "Netflix Model" has become the norm post-COVID - pay top dollar, but also be open to fire if interests do not align. What I've noticed in my career as an IC and management is a lot of lower-mid level management are people who were promoted well beyond where their capabilities. To be brutally honest, the stereotypical snarky HNer who is promoted to Staff Eng with an option to become an EM is the worst hire in any organization.
- Aurornis 9mo ago
  > If I find out that management is being adversarial to ICs (eg. not offering to pay 75th percentile salaries I find this funny because it suggests an equilibrium point where 75% of management must be adversarial by definition. Adversarial is a loaded word. In my experience, the management I’d call most adversarial occurred at companies paying 80th to 90th percentile or higher. The attitude is that they’re paying employees enough that they need to shut up and put up with anything that comes their way. If you don’t like it, we have a list of qualified applicants who will gladly take your place in a heartbeat and won’t complain as much because those paychecks are larger than what they made at their last company. > To be brutally honest, the stereotypical snarky HNer who is promoted to Staff Eng with an option to become an EM is the worst hire in any organization. I think the trend where companies made Staff Eng into a pseudo-management role without reports was a mistake. It gets defended heavily by people who hold that role, but in the real world the Staff Eng people I’ve worked with who don’t really write code but float around and tell people what to do and how to do it become bad for an organization over time. It’s a trap because those people are often very valuable right after they’re promoted, but the roles where they become disconnected from writing code but retain the engineer title leads to a disconnectedness that flips toward counterproductive after a few years. It goes from having an experienced person coaching others to having someone with outdated and mostly abstract knowledge who gets to gatekeep everyone’s activities based on how things worked several years ago when they were still hands on.
andsoitis 9mo ago
> late birthday recognition. if someone is going to feel slighted and similar things add up to them working less, they probably are not a great colleague to begin with. What matters more are: assignment to rewarding work, get paid top dollar, not be bored, get recognition for success, coaching on career growth, given leeway to make mistakes, not overlooked for promotion, etc. Now, as a people manager, if you're not steering those kinds of things, you are not a great manager and you should be replaced with someone who does those things.
- Sharlin 9mo ago
  Being primarily interested in money and career advancement would also make you not a great colleague in many people’s eyes. It’s rather subjective.
  - darth_avocado 9mo ago
    Whether people like to admit it or not, very rarely do people work for anything but money and career advancement. You can claim you work for passion, the love of the game or whatever 100 other reasons people tend to give out. All it takes is 2 years of no raises and a couple of promotions for colleagues for you to start not wanting to work for whatever reason you convinced yourself you were working for.
    - zemvpferreira 9mo ago
      I find a lot of people work at a certain place for the social life, and the money comes second. Including some surprisingly high performers.
      - vohk 9mo ago
        I think that becomes more common with income brackets that can start to feel like "enough". If you've spent time struggling to make ends meet, even median income can feel like previously unimaginable wealth and security, and workplace satisfaction is rarely something that you had a great deal of choice around. If you've spent most of a decade making six figures with benefits, it's easier to decide an extra 10k or even 50k isn't worth the added stress. Cost of living and personal situation (dual incomes, dependents) can shift that needle around quite a lot too.
gwbas1c 9mo ago
Please don't compare employee relationships to dog training. I've had a few encounters with poor managers (or potential managers) who wanted to treat me like a dog. I turned heel and ran in those cases. It's a bad analogy for managing people and should not be perpetuated.
- pastel8739 9mo ago
  It sounds to me that they are actually saying that managing an employee is _not_ like training a dog
  - 9rx 9mo ago
    It is, rather, that managing a manager is like training a dog. As in, if you take a day off later in the week after feeling slighted as the article suggests people do, the manager will never realize that your absenteeism is a result of what they did and not just some other random life event that came your way, such as becoming sick. Much like training a dog, it posits that you need to give the feedback soon after in order for the association to become recognizable by the manager. Although it seems unlikely to me that anyone who is taking time off after feeling slighted is doing so as some kind of silent protest in hopes that the manager will change. I expect it is done to nurse the wound.
- amarant 9mo ago
  I read gps comment as the reverse: in their analogy, the manager is the dog. On a related note, I wouldn't mind being treated like a dog by someone who is up to date with modern dog training practices: instant rewards for success, no negative feedback(unless I'm being aggressive, but I think I can manage that much), and tons of belly and/or back rubs! Where do I sign?
  - Izkata 9mo ago
    "Are we... bonding?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkGfF7LBlk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkGfF7LBlk4
- deleted 9mo ago
kingofmen 9mo ago
Humans, even pointy-haired ones, do have slightly larger brains than dogs precisely for the purpose of being able to form associations over longer timespans. That's a big part of what intelligence is.
- lo_zamoyski 9mo ago
  I think the analogy with dogs is flawed. Association is merely correlative, not causal. It is irrational per se, because it does not concern itself with causes. And the more time passes, the more options there are with which to form associations. So it's not a question of brain size or anything that this might be standing in for. Human beings can with varying degrees of success reflect on their behavior. They can recognize how certain behaviors on their part might encourage certain responses among employees. More importantly, however, they can recognize which behaviors on their part are simply not good in the first place and learn to behave as they should. It's not a question of aligning domino tiles so they fall over a certain way. First and foremost, it's a question of justice and benevolence. Be just and be benevolent, not a domino-aligning psychopath.
- kibwen 9mo ago
  To be fair, I could name managers who would do less damage if they were replaced by a dog. Managing upwards would be greatly eased with the application of dog treats.
RA_Fisher 9mo ago
Econometrics allows us to understand and measure these things. This result isn’t surprising at all. Treating employees well has a similar effect in improving productivity.
BobbyTables2 9mo ago
Imagine if the dog was only rewarded once a year…

mejutoco 9mo ago

> When you train a dog, you have to give a reward very soon after the desired behavior, otherwise the dog won't associate the reward with the behavior Regarding dog training, one can use a placeholder for the reward. This is useful, for example, if you want to reward a dolphin jumping through a hula, because you will not be able to give the reward at that moment, but for example, you can say "yes!" or use a clicker at that moment, and give the reward later, and it will be clear what caused it. For anyone training any animal, I recommend the book: Don't Shoot the Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training by Karen Pryor (not affiliated in any way)

pinnochio 9mo ago
I suppose the employee-getting-revenge-on-manager equivalent would be playing some loud, annoying sound immediately after the slight, and then engaging in absenteeism and cutting work early later on.
- njhnjhnjh 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - pinnochio 9mo ago
    I mean, that works too. Unless the resulting concussion, brain damage, or death means they don't make the association with their slight.
tarkin2 9mo ago
Have we got to the point where we need an article telling us that slighting people doesn't help their motivation? Perhaps the answer is yes when we also compare a worker's motivation to a dog's motivation seemingly without irony.
- pinnochio 9mo ago
  Having a documented effect and effect size puts this in terms that can change manager behavior, even a somewhat callous one, because they can see how it affects their own professional goals. Btw, the comparison was between the dog and manager, and about the association of cause and effect. Maybe you should try to read more carefully and charitably in the future.
  - tarkin2 9mo ago
    Well, to many it seemed that an obvious cause-and-effect fact that should have come from empathy and introspection--that workers are just like you and I don't like being slighted--and didn't need to be written about. Yet when of the top comments used dog training to explain manager-worker relations--something that empathy and introspection could tell you was a bit off (would you feel slighted if I make our interactions analogous to an owner and dog?)--it may show, yes, such does need to be spelt out these days. I recall the University of Manchester was teaching university students empathy.
    - pinnochio 9mo ago
      Again, the comparison was between a dog and a manager. There's zero insinuation that a manager is like an owner and an employee like a dog. It does feel like you're looking for a pretext to feel slighted here. That aside, I completely agree with you that managers should engage in empathy and introspection. I still think it's helpful, even for those that do, to have some empirical confirmation of how strongly employees can be affected by what might seem a simple oversight to an otherwise empathetic and introspective manager. But unfortunately, callous people tend to be chosen for management, and this research is also potentially helpful in aligning their own self-interest with their employees.

njhnjhnjh 9mo ago

[flagged]

pinnochio 9mo ago
Indeed. I've had a few of those. I also had a couple that were really good.
- _alternator_ 9mo ago
  Dogs or managers?
  - pinnochio 9mo ago
    Yep.
educasean 9mo ago
Perhaps it may help to work on your social skills with more intent. People who often find themselves disrespected at work aren't always bad performers but they do tend to have large social blind spots they themselves aren't aware of.
- watwut 9mo ago
  Or maybe, quite a few managers need to work on their social skills. It is genuinely weird that the expectation of emotional and social management always falls on engineer in these debates. Maybe, just maybe, a manager with supposedly higher social skills should be able to manage relationships with engineers better.
- benj111 9mo ago
  Why do you jump to the conclusion of parent being the problem? Your comment implicitly accepts that people's social skills can be problematic, but you assume it isn't the manager?
  - 9mo ago

alephnerd 9mo ago

A lot of this is already known. If I find out that management is being adversarial to ICs (eg. not offering to pay 75th percentile salaries, giving crap equity offers) I've put pressure to let heads roll. Similarly, if I've seen ICs become adversarial (eg. quiet quitting, overemployed, ignoring brutally honest conversations to upskill, constantly undermining product roadmaps) I've often allowed heads to roll as well. At least in the Bay Area, the "Netflix Model" has become the norm post-COVID - pay top dollar, but also be open to fire if interests do not align. What I've noticed in my career as an IC and management is a lot of lower-mid level management are people who were promoted well beyond where their capabilities. To be brutally honest, the stereotypical snarky HNer who is promoted to Staff Eng with an option to become an EM is the worst hire in any organization.

Aurornis 9mo ago
> If I find out that management is being adversarial to ICs (eg. not offering to pay 75th percentile salaries I find this funny because it suggests an equilibrium point where 75% of management must be adversarial by definition. Adversarial is a loaded word. In my experience, the management I’d call most adversarial occurred at companies paying 80th to 90th percentile or higher. The attitude is that they’re paying employees enough that they need to shut up and put up with anything that comes their way. If you don’t like it, we have a list of qualified applicants who will gladly take your place in a heartbeat and won’t complain as much because those paychecks are larger than what they made at their last company. > To be brutally honest, the stereotypical snarky HNer who is promoted to Staff Eng with an option to become an EM is the worst hire in any organization. I think the trend where companies made Staff Eng into a pseudo-management role without reports was a mistake. It gets defended heavily by people who hold that role, but in the real world the Staff Eng people I’ve worked with who don’t really write code but float around and tell people what to do and how to do it become bad for an organization over time. It’s a trap because those people are often very valuable right after they’re promoted, but the roles where they become disconnected from writing code but retain the engineer title leads to a disconnectedness that flips toward counterproductive after a few years. It goes from having an experienced person coaching others to having someone with outdated and mostly abstract knowledge who gets to gatekeep everyone’s activities based on how things worked several years ago when they were still hands on.

andsoitis 9mo ago

> late birthday recognition. if someone is going to feel slighted and similar things add up to them working less, they probably are not a great colleague to begin with. What matters more are: assignment to rewarding work, get paid top dollar, not be bored, get recognition for success, coaching on career growth, given leeway to make mistakes, not overlooked for promotion, etc. Now, as a people manager, if you're not steering those kinds of things, you are not a great manager and you should be replaced with someone who does those things.

Sharlin 9mo ago
Being primarily interested in money and career advancement would also make you not a great colleague in many people’s eyes. It’s rather subjective.
- darth_avocado 9mo ago
  Whether people like to admit it or not, very rarely do people work for anything but money and career advancement. You can claim you work for passion, the love of the game or whatever 100 other reasons people tend to give out. All it takes is 2 years of no raises and a couple of promotions for colleagues for you to start not wanting to work for whatever reason you convinced yourself you were working for.
  - zemvpferreira 9mo ago
    I find a lot of people work at a certain place for the social life, and the money comes second. Including some surprisingly high performers.
    - vohk 9mo ago
      I think that becomes more common with income brackets that can start to feel like "enough". If you've spent time struggling to make ends meet, even median income can feel like previously unimaginable wealth and security, and workplace satisfaction is rarely something that you had a great deal of choice around. If you've spent most of a decade making six figures with benefits, it's easier to decide an extra 10k or even 50k isn't worth the added stress. Cost of living and personal situation (dual incomes, dependents) can shift that needle around quite a lot too.

gwbas1c 9mo ago

Please don't compare employee relationships to dog training. I've had a few encounters with poor managers (or potential managers) who wanted to treat me like a dog. I turned heel and ran in those cases. It's a bad analogy for managing people and should not be perpetuated.

pastel8739 9mo ago
It sounds to me that they are actually saying that managing an employee is _not_ like training a dog
- 9rx 9mo ago
  It is, rather, that managing a manager is like training a dog. As in, if you take a day off later in the week after feeling slighted as the article suggests people do, the manager will never realize that your absenteeism is a result of what they did and not just some other random life event that came your way, such as becoming sick. Much like training a dog, it posits that you need to give the feedback soon after in order for the association to become recognizable by the manager. Although it seems unlikely to me that anyone who is taking time off after feeling slighted is doing so as some kind of silent protest in hopes that the manager will change. I expect it is done to nurse the wound.
amarant 9mo ago
I read gps comment as the reverse: in their analogy, the manager is the dog. On a related note, I wouldn't mind being treated like a dog by someone who is up to date with modern dog training practices: instant rewards for success, no negative feedback(unless I'm being aggressive, but I think I can manage that much), and tons of belly and/or back rubs! Where do I sign?
- Izkata 9mo ago
  "Are we... bonding?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkGfF7LBlk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkGfF7LBlk4
deleted 9mo ago

kingofmen 9mo ago

Humans, even pointy-haired ones, do have slightly larger brains than dogs precisely for the purpose of being able to form associations over longer timespans. That's a big part of what intelligence is.

lo_zamoyski 9mo ago
I think the analogy with dogs is flawed. Association is merely correlative, not causal. It is irrational per se, because it does not concern itself with causes. And the more time passes, the more options there are with which to form associations. So it's not a question of brain size or anything that this might be standing in for. Human beings can with varying degrees of success reflect on their behavior. They can recognize how certain behaviors on their part might encourage certain responses among employees. More importantly, however, they can recognize which behaviors on their part are simply not good in the first place and learn to behave as they should. It's not a question of aligning domino tiles so they fall over a certain way. First and foremost, it's a question of justice and benevolence. Be just and be benevolent, not a domino-aligning psychopath.
kibwen 9mo ago
To be fair, I could name managers who would do less damage if they were replaced by a dog. Managing upwards would be greatly eased with the application of dog treats.

RA_Fisher 9mo ago

Econometrics allows us to understand and measure these things. This result isn’t surprising at all. Treating employees well has a similar effect in improving productivity.

BobbyTables2 9mo ago

Imagine if the dog was only rewarded once a year…