Ways You’re Making Your Employees Less Productive

http://quickbase.intuit.com/blog/2013/09/24/10-ways-youre-making-your-employees-less-productive

by greenyoda • 13 years ago

69 35 13 years ago

quickbase.intuit.com

ffrryuu• 13 years ago

Process, management, de-empowerment, hiring B people.

smtddr2• 13 years ago

Of course, it's more complex than that. Surely you're not suggesting to completely eliminate all four of those. They each have a certain value in their own way.

logicallee• 13 years ago

Yeah all the YCombinator startups that are killing it started with 2 guys/girls, then proceeded to add on a lot of process, management, de-empowerment, and hiring B people. That's how they made it - look at any of them!

jiggy20113• 13 years ago

Somebody has to hire us "B people".

DrJokepu• 13 years ago

I understand that you are using self-deprecation to poke fun of the elitist parent comment, but the fact is that nobody is required to hire "B people".

bonemachine• 13 years ago

My faves:

4. Pretending To Know

3. Not even attempting to communicate (or "communicating" through hints.) Particularly in high-pressure situations.

2. Microcontrolling. (By which I mean: grabbing control of some low-level aspect of the project, or of the team communications, thinking you know better than the team member who already took action to such an extent that you don't need to explain your actions. See also (1), (2).

And my favorite of all:

1. By your very presence. Seriously -- things like overbearing demeanor, poor tact, sexist or jockish language etc can not only be toxic, but instant invitations for your team members to not only begin their job searches immediately, but look forward to the task with vim and glee.

jiggy20113• 13 years ago

Number 2 is what Joel Spolsky calls "hit and run management".

"hit and run management because managers tended to pop up unannounced, give some silly order for exactly how they wanted something done, dammit, without giving any thought to the matter, and leave the room for everyone else to pick up the pieces."

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000072.html

This is the most frustrating when you have spent an entire afternoon carefully considering different approaches to solving a problem and figured out all of the non obvious but important edge cases that show why a particular approach won't work to have someone come in and give it five minutes consideration and say "nah, we should do it that way, it'll work out".

mprovost• 13 years ago

AKA Seagull Managers ("Fly in, make a lot of noise, shit on everything, fly out").

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_manager

famousactress• 13 years ago

I live in San Diego (where a huge Intuit campus is located) and have known lots of people who work there, but none that work remotely with any regularity. I'm curious what #7 (let employees telecommute when they need to) means at Intuit. I wonder what their definition of "need to" is.

markanderson• 13 years ago

I see the article is from Alison Green of Askamanager.org, a professional writer not affiliated with Intuit. Looking at their other content it appears most of it is professional done by some pretty well known authors from NY Times, Forbes.com, etc. Pretty good stuff. Subscribing.

yzap• 13 years ago

I worked at Intuit in the bay area for about three years. During that time, I knew many people that would work from home regularly 1-2 times a week. I really preferred working on my multi-monitor setup in the office (I lived easily bikeable three miles away from campus), so I never took advantage of the liberal WFH policy while I lived out there (except for when waiting for cable man visits and the like).

After three years working in Mountain View, my girlfriend got into a PHD program at the University Wisconsin and Intuit was A-OK with me working remote. So I packed up all my office gear, got issued a Desktop VPN VOIP phone, and moved to Madison, WI. I did that for about two years before I left to cofound a company with several longtime CS friends here in Madison.

So, yeah, Intuit is pretty liberal with telecommuting when it fits the situation (as long as you don't abuse it). : )

InclinedPlane• 13 years ago

It seems self-evident to me that if you treat experienced, talented, highly paid developers like minimum wage workers then you're either losing out on much of that experience and talent or you're paying far too much.

pasbesoin• 13 years ago

Hypocrisy. Telling employees it is "up to them" while in reality giving them no resources, control, nor choices -- or none that matter, i.e. not really listening and responding to them.

Aka "passing the buck".

jonnathanson2• 13 years ago

Exactly.

I have had this boss, unfortunately. To a t. He'd tell me a project was "completely up to me," that I was "the leader" of it, and that I should feel "totally empowered" to make decisions, allocate resources, etc. He proceeded to show up to each of my project meetings, often late and out of context, disagree out loud, offer unsolicited opinions, micromanage, and badger me into implementing his ideas -- thoroughly undermining any ostensible authority I had over the project, or reversing any progress the team had made up to that point. His ideas came in two flavors: a) completely off-the-cuff and unconsidered, and b) foregone conclusions (what the team and I liked to call his "pet" ideas). Both of these types I had to entertain, and often to implement. And of course, when it came time for him to chip in with the execution in any way, or even to explain his rationale, he'd bolt for the door.

Essentially, I was his task rabbit. If a project went to shit, he'd claim it was "mine" and be able to pass the buck accordingly. If it went well, he'd swoop in and scoop up the credit. Attempts to talk to him about it in one-on-ones went nowhere. Attempts to "check in" with him prior to meetings, in the hopes of pre-selling him on a plan, went nowhere. He'd be dead set on a pet idea, and it was my job to "totally lead" the execution of that idea.

Bosses like this are toxic. I'm not sure I've ever found a good way to work successfully with this personality type. If this describes your boss, figure out how to transfer, how to escape, or how to develop Vulcan-like mastery over your anger and your pride. Some tigers can't change their stripes, and I can guarantee you that this kind won't.

misterjangles2• 13 years ago

I have been on both sides if this, although as a boss I have always tried to give others the glory and take the heat. Also I probably do swoop in with ideas, but I don't leave people high and dry to figure them out.

The solution is really to speak up for yourself. You may have to remind your boss that he put you in charge. I can be a tough boss but I will listen to any argument and will be glad to be proven wrong or told that my idea is going on the list for later. But - you must convince me that your idea is better, or more practical, or that you at least have thought things through.

I know it can be tough because bosses tend to be older and, maybe in some cases wiser (but not always). As the boss your pressure is to keep a team moving forward and so you grow used to delegating. I had to be reminded that I gave somebody a project once and I felt really bad about not letting him do it on his own. I really just didn't want to see him fail, but I was micromanaging. It was difficult for him to bring it up to me but I was glad he did and we got past it.

I'd say - face it head on. If the boss still won't listen, then start figuring out another employment opportunity.

bane• 13 years ago

Fun pop-psychology on hiring people by 1-10 ratings and what it says about the hiring manager.

If you hire an n, where 0<=n<=5 then you must be an m where n<m and 1<=m<=6. Because incompetent people want to hire more incompetent people to make them look good and secure their position in the organization.

If you hire an n, where 6<=n<=7 then you must be an m where n<=m and 6<=m<=7. Because reasonable competent people don't want to bring failure into an organization, but don't want anybody showing them up.

If you hire an n, where 8<=n<=10 then you must be an m where 8<=m<=10 and there is a high probability that n>=m. Because truly competent people want to bring in other truly competent people and aren't threatened by people with higher levels of competency, and even might welcome it.

mryan• 13 years ago

Interesting - sounds like a more detailed version of "A's hire A's, B's hire C's".

RougeFemme• 13 years ago

#5 is one of my favorites. One of my co-workers refers to one of our managers as a "drive-by" manager. He agrees with the concept of carving out chunks of time - even remotely - to focus. In reality, if you are on-site, he is constantly "driving by" with things that could have waited or been communicated via IM/email.

JoeBlog• 13 years ago

Allowing unrestricted Internet access.

Seriously, whitelist only the domains necessary for the job. If it's programming, I would only recommend specific StackExchange sites, GitHub, and any documentation sites. Some people have horrible self control and will waste all day on the Internet, despite that they may be great programmers and can actually get stuff done if they put their mind to it. It's not even that the job is boring, it may actually be exciting, and their project may be something they really enjoy, yet the distractions are still more entertaining to them. Like reading and interacting on Hacker News.

EdwardDiego• 13 years ago

Allowing unrestricted Internet access.

On the contrary - filtering my internet indicates that you don't consider me capable of self-regulation... I prefer being treated like a responsible adult - responsible for my great code or my slacking off, whichever I choose.

I greatly value this level of respect from employers.

skeletonjelly• 13 years ago

If they're going to slack off I'm sure they'll find another way.

andrewkreid• 13 years ago

> Seriously, whitelist only the domains necessary for the job

Ok. How _exactly_ do you plan to whitelist the domain of every search result for every query of the form "How do I do [technical task] in [technology/language]"?

I can find at least seven of these in my browsing history for the past week that aren't SO. Not being able to access them would have added hours to the time required to finish the tasks they were related to.

RogerL• 13 years ago

Yes, because there is certainly no way to browse the web via your phone's hotspot! I think this is called shutting the barn door after the horses have fled.

chris_wot• 13 years ago

Trolling HN?

pjscott• 13 years ago

If you can roughly measure someone's effectiveness, then none of this matters; if you can't, then you've got bigger problems.

icecreampain• 13 years ago

I take it that you lead by example and have whitelisted internet where you work, as a coder of course, right?

andyjohnson0• 13 years ago

"8. Insisting on doctor’s notes in order to take sick days."

Is this common in the US? Even for a single day?

I'm in the UK and my contract states (from memory) that I have to get a doctors certificate after five contiguous days of sickness. I'm fairly sure thats been the same for all other companies I've worked for.

Ways You’re Making Your Employees Less Productive

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