8 ms·

“Well, He’s Not Going to Get Very Far”

244 points by jennita 13y ago

iSnow 13y ago
>understand how little faith and trust people have in us when we stand up at a meeting and say “we believe in our culture” Because time and again employees have to read bs that makes their eyes bleed and keep a straight face. The netflix "we are the A++ team" slide is another example. No doubt they are a great team, but all of their workforce deliver a perfect A score over all the worklife, no matter if they get ill, have children or broken hearts?
- walshemj 13y ago
  Reminds me of "are we an effective team" from Oblivion :-;
pekk 13y ago
A culture where everyone has to be in the perfect 1%, or where everyone is informing on everyone, or where people are very actively competing for status and territory, is also one where nobody will show vulnerability or speak up or tell the truth, except as it seems strategic to do so.
- VLM 13y ago
  Which shows the perfect meaninglessness of the netflix slide, the cognitive dissonance of it. "We fire all B performers regardless of effort". Think about that. Pretend you don't know what netflix does. I hope nuclear reactors are run by people like that. Oh that sounds like a good slogan for an open heart surgeon. Secret service agents? No, you say? Hmm how about space shuttle tile installation specialist? I've got it, sounds like people who guide tin cans full of thousands of gallons of flammable fuel and hundreds of vulnerable human beings, miles above the earth at just under the speed of sound in incredibly crowded skies and they almost never make a mistake. Umm are they the people we trust our youth to, to mold and train their minds, or at the other end, the people we trust to care for our elders? Nope none of the above... dude, they rent videos. No.... you're kidding me! Really? Thats all? Every corporate mythology has some kind of self congratulatory mythos about being the elite of the elite, perfection on earth. Lots of kool-aid get drunk at these proclamations. It sounds absolutely hilarious to realistic outsiders not drunk on the kool-aid. I know this is HN where only binary thinking is allowed therefore making fun of them for not being the 1% elite means I'm implying they must be the bottom 1%. Nope. Not at all. They're probably good average people doing good average things, just like every other average company out there. Key word being average. Dude... they rent videos... I hope to god for the survival of our species that the intellectual elite of our civilization are doing something slightly more important. And I think they are.
  - purplelobster 13y ago
    Couldn't agree more. Every little startup and bigcorp think they need the Ninja Rockstar Astronaut Millionaire Cowboy 1% Hacker, while in fact they're just looking for someone to crank out some standard js or ruby for some social networking web app.
    - VLM 13y ago
      Oh, they might need a minority of "A" level players for a couple of the really tough jobs. Whoever runs netflix routing and NAS gets a total tip of my hat to them and at least some of them must be "A" level. I bet they've got some guys who know a few things about video codecs too. On the other hand, the dude who files expense reports in the correct filing cabinet most of the time, well, lets be polite and claim its hard to say. Describing the entire corporate culture as "A" level is just laughable.
      - jwoah12 13y ago
        Well to be fair, you have to compare the guy filing expense reports to his peers. He may be the best damn expense report filer in North America.
        VLM 13y ago
        True as an example its unfair to pick on one dude. BUT... if he's a "A" level hero 1% astronaut then statistics indicate at least 10 of his coworkers are just joe average, maybe 100. See, here's the problem. You can get one, maybe two geniuses to found a company. Maybe even a couple peppering the whole company... But wikipedia claims they have over 2000 employees. Can you have an organization full of geniuses? Sure, although its rare. Think of the institute for advanced studies in its glory days. Or Bell Labs in the good old days. If you twist definitions and turn the Manhattan Project into one org and only count the top physicists and not the rank and file, sure. A two thousand person video rental company, um, no, I don't think so. Now the Kool-Aid drinkers could proclaim that they only hire personnel with Nobel Prizes in Physics. But 2000+ prizes have not been issued yet, and quite a few of those people are dead or otherwise unavailable, most (all?) of the early 20th century winners for example. Even worse the whole industry also claims in public they also only hire Nobel Laureates. I guarantee that NFLX does not fire all B and below performers because there is not enough talent to pull it off industry wide especially with everyone else having the same ridiculous demand. Frankly that's good. Who wants to work in an industry where 99% of the graduates are permanently unemployed and only 1% ever get to work? Or even worse, a society with 99% unemployment rate?
- mseebach 13y ago
  That's a quite uncharitable reading of the Netflix slide (I assumes that's what you're referring to). Your "A-game" is your best, not the best in the world. Your "B-game", by extension, is something less. The way I read it, is that as long as you're doing the best work you can, it doesn't matter when you work. If you're doing less than your best work, well, you should stop.
  - gyepi 13y ago
    > Your "A-game" is your best, not the best in the world.... Hmm, that doesn't jibe with the idea of not rewarding mere effort, which is how I read it as well; we reward results, and "punish" lack of results. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; applicants know what they are getting into and can self select out if they don't feel up to it.
    - mseebach 13y ago
      Well, your best has to be good enough to get good results. I just did not get the vibe "you must be a top 1% astronaut rockstar" from that slide that the GP seemed to.
eykanal 13y ago
What a perfect example of the benefits of open communication. Sarah was a skilled enough boss to make Zach feel comfortable challenging her. Zach was an engaged enough employee to actually discuss something that was bothering him. There are so many ways that this could not have happened. This makes me really want to work with that team.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  Really, its all about trust. People need to trust that what they say won't be twisted around and used against them. The challenge is that the percentage of people from the population of people who want management responsibility that are willing to manipulate the situation for their own gain, is higher than the control population. Which means that people get exposed to them as managers more often than is ideal (in the ideal case they are managed to understand that 'winning' is a high level of trust on their team, but that doesn't happen often enough) Just one of the ways that sociopaths have made life less enjoyable.
- tekromancr 13y ago
  Me as well. The post just gave me the warm fuzzies.
- grappler 13y ago
  That reminds me of a stupid thing I said once. At a sprint retrospective, I said something to the effect of “I realize that I could stand to get faster at coding and using the editor shortcuts”. I was fired the next day. Reason given: coding skill.
  - tomjen3 13y ago
    That may have been the worst thing a manager could possibly do, in that situation. nobody is ever going to trust that company enough to expose themselves and no improvement Ida going to happen.
  - sokoloff 13y ago
    I doubt that there was a strict causal link between your statement and your termination. (That no one was considering it, then you made that statement, then suddenly you're let go the next day.) If there was, and you're the type to read HN, you are better off anyway, even if it felt otherwise at the time.
rmrfrmrf 13y ago
How many companies that tout flexible work schedules actually allow them? In my mind, a flexible work schedule should mean somewhere in the realm of 35-40 hours a week, with those expected occasional 41-60 hr spikes before a deadline. When I talked to a recruiter recently, though, I asked them about their flexible work schedule. What they said was kind of horrifying: "Oh yeah, we're TOTALLY flexible! When there's a deadline due, we all work 60+ hours, but there are SOME weeks when we literally struggle to make our required 40." Like, what? A flexible work schedule now means choosing between unpaid overtime and MORE unpaid overtime? GEE THANKS!
- mjewkes 13y ago
  Paying an hourly rate solves these problems. Our project managers discourage long work weeks because they add cost without delivering proportional value. Work weeks tend to be in the 20-25 hour range. We compensate by hiring about 30% more devs than average. The main disadvantage comes when a dev (often with a unique skillset) "owns" a particularly challenging piece of the project. Otherwise it works well.
  - rmrfrmrf 13y ago
    If you're working for a new company, this might be true. However, many established companies (like the one I work for now) have fewer benefits for hourly employees, not to mention the pay ceilings are much lower than salary. Paying hourly also has a lot of annoying caveats to it. Should I be clocked in for work-related functions? What about ones where I'm expected to be there but it's from 6pm-8pm at a restaurant (and I'm already working 40+ hours with my boss getting hounded for excessive overtime pay)? Does this party at 1pm count as my government mandated lunch break? How closely am I being watched to make sure I'm working "efficiently"? Point being, hourlies usually end up being treated as second-class citizens one way or another, and it becomes even more apparent when hourly employees and salaried employees work together.
    - VLM 13y ago
      Being treated with respect as a human being is a strange way to describe being treated as a second class citizen (Been there done that, on both sides of the argument BTW, and hourly was much more professional, much more humane) The answer to your questions BTW are yes, yes, yes if optional no if not, and depends solely on how paranoid the boss is and has nothing whatsoever to do with how finance pays you. The first three questions are pretty simple to figure out on your own. Did the boss tell you to do it, and will it show up on your review if you don't complete that requirement? Then you get paid, duh. I would agree with your last line, when I was hourly they treated salaried coworkers literally worse than slaves, not even as well as property is treated. Horrific.
rdl 13y ago
What is TAGFEE? Is that some SEOmoz-specific term? I found other places they'd used it but no actual description in 2 seconds of googling.
- korethr 13y ago
  Following the link in the upper right-hand corner, I find a page which talks about being Transparent, Authentic, Generous, Fun, Empathetic, and Exceptional. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-we-believe-why-seomozs-tagfee-tenets http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-we-believe-why-seomozs-tagfe...
  - rdl 13y ago
    Weird, the design of sites (other than this one) has caused me to be totally blind to content in the margin like that; it's usually some kind of social media sharing widget or something.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
BoredAstronaut 13y ago
I refer you to Celine's Laws, #2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celines_laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celines_laws "Communication is only possible between equals". Equality is a perception, but the one with the power to punish inevitably decides who is equal, and who isn't. The safe bet if you're in the inferior position is to assume that rocking the boat will get you in trouble. That's why everyone hates when bosses make jokes about firing them. It's only funny if you know it's a joke, but employees can never be sure.
- itsybitsycoder 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celine%27s_laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celine%27s_laws
joshrotenberg 13y ago
Next question: Why did Sarah have Kenny's keys?
Lagged2Death 13y ago
It's a bad idea to put a photograph of keys on-line, particularly in such a way that they can be matched up with a real-world identity. And the higher-profile you are, the worse an idea it is, I imagine. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/07/duplicating_phy.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/07/duplicating_ph... http://www.news.com.au/national-news/killer-escaped-prison-after-being-issued-picture-of-master-key-to-all-locks/story-fncynjr2-1226629878591 http://www.news.com.au/national-news/killer-escaped-prison-a...
- Kluny 13y ago
  For god's sake, have an opinion that wasn't on the front page of HN last week.
  - tekromancr 13y ago
    Yikes. Is the hostility needed?
getglue 13y ago
Moz circle jerk.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
Values and culture are defined by actions. If a company has to spend a lot of time telling its employees that they are valued, that usually indicates that the message is trying to counteract some stronger implicit message based on actions. It's like hearing "we value your business" while you're on hold for support. If they actually valued your business they would take the effort to provide better support. When I file a ticket with my VPS provider there is communication going on almost instantly and typically the issue is resolved within a matter of minutes, they don't have to tell me that they value my business, they show it. And I spend less money with them than I do with my mobile provider or my ISP.
webXL 13y ago
Nice story, but moz.com really needs to "body { color: black }" with that background of theirs.
usablebytes 13y ago
"Assumption is the mother of all screwups"; and yet it is so natural to all of us. Salute to Sarah for building an excellent open culture and Zach's courage to speak out. And yes, 'trust' is critical in organizations. Good story.

244 points by jennita 13y ago

iSnow 13y ago

>understand how little faith and trust people have in us when we stand up at a meeting and say “we believe in our culture” Because time and again employees have to read bs that makes their eyes bleed and keep a straight face. The netflix "we are the A++ team" slide is another example. No doubt they are a great team, but all of their workforce deliver a perfect A score over all the worklife, no matter if they get ill, have children or broken hearts?

walshemj 13y ago
Reminds me of "are we an effective team" from Oblivion :-;

pekk 13y ago

A culture where everyone has to be in the perfect 1%, or where everyone is informing on everyone, or where people are very actively competing for status and territory, is also one where nobody will show vulnerability or speak up or tell the truth, except as it seems strategic to do so.

VLM 13y ago
Which shows the perfect meaninglessness of the netflix slide, the cognitive dissonance of it. "We fire all B performers regardless of effort". Think about that. Pretend you don't know what netflix does. I hope nuclear reactors are run by people like that. Oh that sounds like a good slogan for an open heart surgeon. Secret service agents? No, you say? Hmm how about space shuttle tile installation specialist? I've got it, sounds like people who guide tin cans full of thousands of gallons of flammable fuel and hundreds of vulnerable human beings, miles above the earth at just under the speed of sound in incredibly crowded skies and they almost never make a mistake. Umm are they the people we trust our youth to, to mold and train their minds, or at the other end, the people we trust to care for our elders? Nope none of the above... dude, they rent videos. No.... you're kidding me! Really? Thats all? Every corporate mythology has some kind of self congratulatory mythos about being the elite of the elite, perfection on earth. Lots of kool-aid get drunk at these proclamations. It sounds absolutely hilarious to realistic outsiders not drunk on the kool-aid. I know this is HN where only binary thinking is allowed therefore making fun of them for not being the 1% elite means I'm implying they must be the bottom 1%. Nope. Not at all. They're probably good average people doing good average things, just like every other average company out there. Key word being average. Dude... they rent videos... I hope to god for the survival of our species that the intellectual elite of our civilization are doing something slightly more important. And I think they are.
- purplelobster 13y ago
  Couldn't agree more. Every little startup and bigcorp think they need the Ninja Rockstar Astronaut Millionaire Cowboy 1% Hacker, while in fact they're just looking for someone to crank out some standard js or ruby for some social networking web app.
  - VLM 13y ago
    Oh, they might need a minority of "A" level players for a couple of the really tough jobs. Whoever runs netflix routing and NAS gets a total tip of my hat to them and at least some of them must be "A" level. I bet they've got some guys who know a few things about video codecs too. On the other hand, the dude who files expense reports in the correct filing cabinet most of the time, well, lets be polite and claim its hard to say. Describing the entire corporate culture as "A" level is just laughable.
    - jwoah12 13y ago
      Well to be fair, you have to compare the guy filing expense reports to his peers. He may be the best damn expense report filer in North America.
      - VLM 13y ago
        True as an example its unfair to pick on one dude. BUT... if he's a "A" level hero 1% astronaut then statistics indicate at least 10 of his coworkers are just joe average, maybe 100. See, here's the problem. You can get one, maybe two geniuses to found a company. Maybe even a couple peppering the whole company... But wikipedia claims they have over 2000 employees. Can you have an organization full of geniuses? Sure, although its rare. Think of the institute for advanced studies in its glory days. Or Bell Labs in the good old days. If you twist definitions and turn the Manhattan Project into one org and only count the top physicists and not the rank and file, sure. A two thousand person video rental company, um, no, I don't think so. Now the Kool-Aid drinkers could proclaim that they only hire personnel with Nobel Prizes in Physics. But 2000+ prizes have not been issued yet, and quite a few of those people are dead or otherwise unavailable, most (all?) of the early 20th century winners for example. Even worse the whole industry also claims in public they also only hire Nobel Laureates. I guarantee that NFLX does not fire all B and below performers because there is not enough talent to pull it off industry wide especially with everyone else having the same ridiculous demand. Frankly that's good. Who wants to work in an industry where 99% of the graduates are permanently unemployed and only 1% ever get to work? Or even worse, a society with 99% unemployment rate?
mseebach 13y ago
That's a quite uncharitable reading of the Netflix slide (I assumes that's what you're referring to). Your "A-game" is your best, not the best in the world. Your "B-game", by extension, is something less. The way I read it, is that as long as you're doing the best work you can, it doesn't matter when you work. If you're doing less than your best work, well, you should stop.
- gyepi 13y ago
  > Your "A-game" is your best, not the best in the world.... Hmm, that doesn't jibe with the idea of not rewarding mere effort, which is how I read it as well; we reward results, and "punish" lack of results. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; applicants know what they are getting into and can self select out if they don't feel up to it.
  - mseebach 13y ago
    Well, your best has to be good enough to get good results. I just did not get the vibe "you must be a top 1% astronaut rockstar" from that slide that the GP seemed to.

eykanal 13y ago

What a perfect example of the benefits of open communication. Sarah was a skilled enough boss to make Zach feel comfortable challenging her. Zach was an engaged enough employee to actually discuss something that was bothering him. There are so many ways that this could not have happened. This makes me really want to work with that team.

ChuckMcM 13y ago
Really, its all about trust. People need to trust that what they say won't be twisted around and used against them. The challenge is that the percentage of people from the population of people who want management responsibility that are willing to manipulate the situation for their own gain, is higher than the control population. Which means that people get exposed to them as managers more often than is ideal (in the ideal case they are managed to understand that 'winning' is a high level of trust on their team, but that doesn't happen often enough) Just one of the ways that sociopaths have made life less enjoyable.
tekromancr 13y ago
Me as well. The post just gave me the warm fuzzies.
grappler 13y ago
That reminds me of a stupid thing I said once. At a sprint retrospective, I said something to the effect of “I realize that I could stand to get faster at coding and using the editor shortcuts”. I was fired the next day. Reason given: coding skill.
- tomjen3 13y ago
  That may have been the worst thing a manager could possibly do, in that situation. nobody is ever going to trust that company enough to expose themselves and no improvement Ida going to happen.
- sokoloff 13y ago
  I doubt that there was a strict causal link between your statement and your termination. (That no one was considering it, then you made that statement, then suddenly you're let go the next day.) If there was, and you're the type to read HN, you are better off anyway, even if it felt otherwise at the time.

rmrfrmrf 13y ago

How many companies that tout flexible work schedules actually allow them? In my mind, a flexible work schedule should mean somewhere in the realm of 35-40 hours a week, with those expected occasional 41-60 hr spikes before a deadline. When I talked to a recruiter recently, though, I asked them about their flexible work schedule. What they said was kind of horrifying: "Oh yeah, we're TOTALLY flexible! When there's a deadline due, we all work 60+ hours, but there are SOME weeks when we literally struggle to make our required 40." Like, what? A flexible work schedule now means choosing between unpaid overtime and MORE unpaid overtime? GEE THANKS!

mjewkes 13y ago
Paying an hourly rate solves these problems. Our project managers discourage long work weeks because they add cost without delivering proportional value. Work weeks tend to be in the 20-25 hour range. We compensate by hiring about 30% more devs than average. The main disadvantage comes when a dev (often with a unique skillset) "owns" a particularly challenging piece of the project. Otherwise it works well.
- rmrfrmrf 13y ago
  If you're working for a new company, this might be true. However, many established companies (like the one I work for now) have fewer benefits for hourly employees, not to mention the pay ceilings are much lower than salary. Paying hourly also has a lot of annoying caveats to it. Should I be clocked in for work-related functions? What about ones where I'm expected to be there but it's from 6pm-8pm at a restaurant (and I'm already working 40+ hours with my boss getting hounded for excessive overtime pay)? Does this party at 1pm count as my government mandated lunch break? How closely am I being watched to make sure I'm working "efficiently"? Point being, hourlies usually end up being treated as second-class citizens one way or another, and it becomes even more apparent when hourly employees and salaried employees work together.
  - VLM 13y ago
    Being treated with respect as a human being is a strange way to describe being treated as a second class citizen (Been there done that, on both sides of the argument BTW, and hourly was much more professional, much more humane) The answer to your questions BTW are yes, yes, yes if optional no if not, and depends solely on how paranoid the boss is and has nothing whatsoever to do with how finance pays you. The first three questions are pretty simple to figure out on your own. Did the boss tell you to do it, and will it show up on your review if you don't complete that requirement? Then you get paid, duh. I would agree with your last line, when I was hourly they treated salaried coworkers literally worse than slaves, not even as well as property is treated. Horrific.

rdl 13y ago

What is TAGFEE? Is that some SEOmoz-specific term? I found other places they'd used it but no actual description in 2 seconds of googling.

korethr 13y ago
Following the link in the upper right-hand corner, I find a page which talks about being Transparent, Authentic, Generous, Fun, Empathetic, and Exceptional. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-we-believe-why-seomozs-tagfee-tenets http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-we-believe-why-seomozs-tagfe...
- rdl 13y ago
  Weird, the design of sites (other than this one) has caused me to be totally blind to content in the margin like that; it's usually some kind of social media sharing widget or something.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

BoredAstronaut 13y ago

I refer you to Celine's Laws, #2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celines_laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celines_laws "Communication is only possible between equals". Equality is a perception, but the one with the power to punish inevitably decides who is equal, and who isn't. The safe bet if you're in the inferior position is to assume that rocking the boat will get you in trouble. That's why everyone hates when bosses make jokes about firing them. It's only funny if you know it's a joke, but employees can never be sure.

itsybitsycoder 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celine%27s_laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celine%27s_laws

joshrotenberg 13y ago

Next question: Why did Sarah have Kenny's keys?

Lagged2Death 13y ago

It's a bad idea to put a photograph of keys on-line, particularly in such a way that they can be matched up with a real-world identity. And the higher-profile you are, the worse an idea it is, I imagine. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/07/duplicating_phy.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/07/duplicating_ph... http://www.news.com.au/national-news/killer-escaped-prison-after-being-issued-picture-of-master-key-to-all-locks/story-fncynjr2-1226629878591 http://www.news.com.au/national-news/killer-escaped-prison-a...

Kluny 13y ago
For god's sake, have an opinion that wasn't on the front page of HN last week.
- tekromancr 13y ago
  Yikes. Is the hostility needed?

getglue 13y ago

Moz circle jerk.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

Values and culture are defined by actions. If a company has to spend a lot of time telling its employees that they are valued, that usually indicates that the message is trying to counteract some stronger implicit message based on actions. It's like hearing "we value your business" while you're on hold for support. If they actually valued your business they would take the effort to provide better support. When I file a ticket with my VPS provider there is communication going on almost instantly and typically the issue is resolved within a matter of minutes, they don't have to tell me that they value my business, they show it. And I spend less money with them than I do with my mobile provider or my ISP.

webXL 13y ago

Nice story, but moz.com really needs to "body { color: black }" with that background of theirs.

usablebytes 13y ago

"Assumption is the mother of all screwups"; and yet it is so natural to all of us. Salute to Sarah for building an excellent open culture and Zach's courage to speak out. And yes, 'trust' is critical in organizations. Good story.