Comment by techjamie
Comment by techjamie 4 days ago
That sounds like a management problem to me. If they can't tell that someone's output is that low, then clearly they need to switch their goals for what they consider "productive."
Comment by techjamie 4 days ago
That sounds like a management problem to me. If they can't tell that someone's output is that low, then clearly they need to switch their goals for what they consider "productive."
How do you all track sprints / progress / goals on your side of the fence?
At least in the orgs I've been in, it seems to me that everyone is always aware at any given time who the "coasters" are. We have to constantly work around them / isolate them from causing damage. Hell, even Forte should give some signals.
Uh, managing their reports and judging their performance is like the primary responsibility for most managers in big tech.
If they can't do that, they will grasp at any reason outside their control as an excuse for why their team is underperforming, WFH is the perfect fall guy, and I can guarantee you that Amazon has no real data to back up the claim that WFH decreases productivity - in fact they published data to the opposite.
When you hire managers, some percentage of them won't be solid. And even the best managers have to balance giving someone a chance vs spotting abuse.
Perhaps, but that doesn’t sound like you should lower productivity for everyone else hoping that it’ll reduce the need for managers to do their jobs. I’ve seen too many people spend 8 in the office working mostly on fantasy football or Facebook to think that changing locations is an effective solution.
I can't tell from your reply if you agree this is the job of management or if you think managers can't do this off on average.
Not OP, but I think most manages genuinely struggle with this because it is hard. Im not sure what the solution is. Perhaps they need to double the pay for management to hire folks who can tell the difference?
In these bigger companies it is very time consuming and difficult to fire someone. In some it is nearly impossible for a manager, and they can't replace the headcount until they do.
There's a real tradeoff between employment stability and managerial oversight in companies at scale.
> In these bigger companies it is very time consuming and difficult to fire someone.
Not at all, most of big tech literally has firing quotas... which combined with the typical incompetent/parasitic management means good engineers are fired and terrible ones stay on/get promoted.
It can't be that difficult to fire people if these "RTO or GTFO" ultimatums are so popular.
I've seen relatively small companies take 6 months to fire someone, simply because they "have" to follow policy and procedures. Document it. Put them on a PIP. Follow up. Document it. More meetings. Document it. Meanwhile, coworkers who know this is happening are getting more and more annoyed picking up slack for this person. It'd be cheaper to pay people to leave.
"Management one level above you wants to fire you" and "the CEO said anyone who ignores him is getting fired" are two very different grades of problem.
Not if they can just force enough people to RTO and the ones who won't leave. If we don't organize against this, and negotiate as individuals with our individual managers, we can only sit back and observe this happen to us and our peers.
That's why we have to have spyware on everyone's computers! How else could we possibly measure productivity?
I don't know what you think "management" does, but it's not just being a panopticon on making sure every individual employee is performing to their expectations.
In the same environment that is affecting SDEs right now, managers are more and more being asked to do more individual contributor actions, while increasing their span of control.
They have their own work to do, primarily in how they report progress and vision UPWARDS. Most IC's don't realize but depending on their skip level, managing "upwards" may be requiring more than half of a manager's time.
So sure, they know if the overall team work gets done. And they absolutely know their top and bottom performers. But in the middle? Lots of room for variability. Is someone good even if they're not coding becaue they seem to be unblocking others? Is someone good if they're not talking to anyone but cranking out tons of code? This is where most performance management time ends up going to.
And in no point in today's culture, does it account for the possibility of catching people that are moonlighting or coasting.