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

http://moz.com/rand/well-hes-not-going-to-get-very-far/

by jennita • 13 years ago

244 84 13 years ago

pekk• 13 years 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.

VLM7• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

aaronblohowiak• 13 years ago

The thing is you need I be an A performer for your role. This could also be summarized as avoid the Peter principle.

rmrfrmrf5• 13 years ago

There's a benefit to making a ridiculous statement like that, though: it makes firing decisions a lot easier. Have you ever worked with that employee--the one that, sigh, they do an OK job, but wow, you have to explain everything to them 700 different ways until you get on the same page. The same mistakes keep popping up over and over. You sit them down and explain what's up. They say they're trying and they're overwhelmed. You believe them and understand that yes, our company has a lot of stuff going on and it can be tough to get your bearings.

Months pass, and the employee is skating slightly below to just above the point of causing you more work. You've corrected some of the recurring mistakes they made when they first started, but now new ones are coming up. You make notes of the employee's progress and give honest feedback. They continue to improve. Slowly. Improving just enough so that HR has strong reservations about starting the termination process. You're stuck with a dud employee that, yeah, they're not absolutely horrible, but you know that you'd be much better off with an employee that could at least get things right the second time instead of the 20th.

"You shouldn't have hired them," I hear you say. It's not always the case that you hire them. I've "inherited" bad employees from predecessors in the past and have even had my boss transfer employees into my department that were doing even worse in other departments.

So yeah, if our company had any kind of policy like the one at Netflix, this entire process wouldn't even be a conversation. I just send the mediocre employee off riding into the sunset and hire someone that's a better fit with none of the fuss and BS.

walshemj3• 13 years ago

And I could go into any company in the world and make an A performer a B just by using their procedures.

jonwingfield• 13 years ago

Aren't you attacking the wrong thing here? The expectation is performance, not necessarily brilliance. I'm personally tired of the perception that performance is even correlated with hours worked, let alone causative.

bcoates• 13 years ago

I think you might be reading a little much into the slide. I think it's obvious that the point is you get no credit for effort expended: you either deliver what is expected of you or you don't.

Also, I'm not sure what hellish grading system you're used to where "A" means "1% elite". In most contexts, it means "competent": A student at most educational institutions in the US can expect an A if they grasped the class material and didn't flub the tests and assignments.

There are places where consistent, well intentioned sub-competence is sufficient, a high-availability, technically complicated, ultra high volume paid service running on retail margins is not one of them.

mseebach2• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

eykanal• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

tekromancr5• 13 years ago

Me as well. The post just gave me the warm fuzzies.

grappler4• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

mcherm2• 13 years ago

How was your next job? Better? Worse?

tlogan• 13 years ago

The open communication does last long (: The problem is the following: the existing managers will move on, the new manager will come, the new employee will come in, ... So... you eventually end up in the same place as in any other company.

rubinelli• 13 years ago

The trick is not hiring too fast. If you bring employees in one at a time and wait for them to acclimate, you won't have a culture shift. Most companies go downhill when they try to grow too big, too fast.

rmrfrmrf5• 13 years 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!

mjewkes2• 13 years 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.

rmrfrmrf5• 13 years 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.

lsc• 13 years ago

>When I talked to a recruiter recently, though, I asked them about their flexible work schedule.

I have /never/ talked to a recruiter who knew anything about how the actual company worked.

And how would they? In my experience? how many hours you are expected to work is a complex negotiation that depends a lot on how important you are to the team, and how effective you are perceived as being.

This changes dynamically, too. get something really cool done during the slow times? yeah, slack for a week; nobody will whine. Screw it up during crunch time? you better show up before the boss and leave after the boss for a few weeks.

(the second one can be dangerous... I mean, if you are screwing up due to overwork, then having you work more.... but that's the way it is.)

rmrfrmrf5• 13 years ago

Sorry, recruiter was the wrong word. This person was recruiting people, but they were a developer on the web team talking about their experience in the workplace.

31reasons• 13 years ago

I truly believe Programmers should never get a "job". If you are not skilled at all they are really overpaying you and if you have any skill at all, they are really underpaying you. I wish a day when all programmers just work as consultants and paid of every hour they work. Programmers should be treated more like artists or actors.

Joeri• 13 years ago

There is more value to programming than what it puts in your bank account though. If you wish to build and be part of a truly engaging product, you have to engage for the long haul with a codebase, on the order of years. That means either (A) you make your own product (and are responsible for your own business strategy, accounting and sales), or (B) you get into a fixed contract with some employer (where due to the long term relationship they will be careful to restrict what they pay).

In scenario (A) you will not spend all your day programming. You will have to care about the business parts. If you're not cut out for those parts, even if you end up making lots of money, you will probably not be happy.

In scenario (B) you are more likely to be able to spend more time programming, with less overhead to worry about, but this depends heavily on the employer, so you may end up performing several false starts or walking away from an employer/employee relationship. If an employer accepts you, you will most likely not be paid what your time is worth, but this is a willing exchange for not having to care about the non-technical parts of the story.

Is there a scenario C? If there is I've not yet discovered it.

snowwrestler• 13 years ago

Consultants absolutely do not get paid for every hour they work.

Time spent finding new clients, for example, is totally unpaid. And most consultants need to spend a fair amount of time doing this.

Ongoing training and education time are also totally unpaid. Clients hire you to solve problems and go away--they won't invest in you like they would an employee.

rdl6• 13 years 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• 13 years 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-tagfe...

rdl6• 13 years 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.

BoredAstronaut• 13 years ago

I refer you to Celine's Laws, #2: 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• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celine%27s_laws

iSnow• 13 years 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?

walshemj3• 13 years ago

Reminds me of "are we an effective team" from Oblivion :-;

joshrotenberg• 13 years ago

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

Lagged2Death• 13 years 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_ph...

http://www.news.com.au/national-news/killer-escaped-prison-a...

Kluny• 13 years ago

For god's sake, have an opinion that wasn't on the front page of HN last week.

tekromancr5• 13 years ago

Yikes. Is the hostility needed?

getglue• 13 years ago

Moz circle jerk.

InclinedPlane• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

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

usablebytes• 13 years 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.

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

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